Vehicle Utilization

Two reference measures are common. Time-based utilization compares booked or driven time with available time, making it suitable for pool vehicles. Distance-based utilization compares actual mileage with planned mileage; for leased vehicles, this also reveals the risk of excess or insufficient mileage.

A consistent reference period matters because utilization varies considerably: a vehicle used 70% of the time on weekdays may be used only 40% of the time over the full year.

A site has ten pool vehicles. With 21 working days and eight available hours per day, this gives 1,680 available vehicle hours per month. Vehicles were booked for 620 hours.

The average alone is not enough to make a decision. The figure becomes useful when broken down by vehicle: if some vehicles are at 80 percent and others at 10 percent, the fleet is not necessarily too large; its use is unevenly distributed.

That depends on the purpose. A pool intended to cover peaks in demand should not remain close to full utilization, or short-notice bookings will no longer be possible. Persistently low utilization across several vehicles, by contrast, points to excess capacity.

The metric is most useful over time and when comparing sites, rather than as an absolute target.

Not automatically a reduction in vehicle numbers. Distribution is often the cause: some vehicles are permanently booked, while others sit idle because they are less accessible or less popular. Allocating vehicles according to need instead of free choice evens this out without shrinking the fleet.

Only when utilization remains low across all vehicles at a site is the fleet actually too large. That conclusion requires booking and usage data covering at least one quarter.