Truck parts and labor costs pulled back in the fourth quarter of 2024, after a rise in the previous quarter, according to the latest data from the Technology & Maintenance Council (TMC) and service platform Decisiv.
“Q3 threw us for a loop,” Robert Ziemba, Decisiv’s vice-president of marketing said during a TMC press conference, noted it came on the heels of a steady run of decreasing costs for maintenance managers. “There was increasing parts and labor costs pretty much across the board.”
Decisiv uses machine learning to assign VMRS codes to service events across its network, which covers 74,000 fleets and 7 million commercial vehicles. This allows it to measure the year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter pricing trends across some 25 VMRS event types.
The good news is, the blip in costs was short-lived, and in the fourth quarter, combined parts and labor costs once again declined.
Parts costs pulled back 1.5% while labor costs decreased 1.9% from Q3. Compared to Q4 2024, parts costs were down 2% and labor costs down 0.9%.
“This is the first time in a long time we’ve seen labor costs coming down,” Ziemba said, noting costs were up in just nine of 25 tracked VMRS systems, compared to 19 the previous quarter.
There’s more good news for Canadian fleets. Regionally, Canada was the least expensive place to get repairs done, and not just because of the exchange rate; all dollars were converted to U.S. to remove the weak value of the loonie from the equation.
“For longhaul fleets that have a choice of where they can service their trucks, in general it’s better to service them in the Midwest or in Canada, if you’re going cross-border,” Ziemba advised.
Labor rates in Q4 across Canada and the U.S. dropped 1.9% from the previous quarter and nearly 1% year over year. “This is something we haven’t seen for quite a while,” said Ziemba. “It could point to better technician retention, because that has been one of the issues driving up labor costs.”
As for the downward trend in overall parts and labor costs, Ziemba said a reduction in for-hire truck tonnage may be part of the explanation, but the number of service events tracked actually increased.
Year over year, the categories that saw the biggest increase were aerodynamic devices and transmissions. Quarter over quarter, aero devices, general accessories and frame repairs saw the biggest jump in prices.
As for decreases, year over year it was manual transmissions, rear driven axle and driveshafts that accounted for the biggest drop in repair costs. Quarter over quarter, driveshafts, fuel systems and steering represented the largest decrease in costs.
Asked how tariffs may impact parts prices, Ziemba said it’s “too soon” to say. The survey, he noted, tells the story of what has happened, and isn’t predictive.
But Jack Poster, VMRS manager with TMC, said parts prices will go up, which will likely be reflected in the Q2 survey.
“Every fleet has said all vendors have told them ‘You’re getting a price increase’,” he said, citing anecdotal evidence from discussions with fleets. “Once they increase [prices] they never bring the price back down, so [fleets] are all factoring in this is going to be priced in and isn’t coming back down. They’re stocking inventories higher and trying to anticipate what’s coming. Nobody knows, but they’ve all been warned.”
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