Van and Fleet Running Cost Spreadsheet, Excel Google Sheets, Cost Per Mile, Downtime and Keep or Replace Calculator (Digital Download)

VAN AND FLEET RUNNING COST — EXCEL AND GOOGLE SHEETS

The van with no monthly payment feels like the cheap one. It is usually the most expensive vehicle you own. This workbook shows you why, in dollars a mile, and tells you the month a van stops being worth keeping.

WHAT MAKES IT DIFFERENT

Every fleet template on the internet is a maintenance log: it records what happened. This one costs it. It adds the two numbers that never appear on a bank statement and therefore never appear in a spreadsheet — the value the van lost this year, and the working days it spent off the road while you could not send it out. In the worked example those two lines are the biggest on the page.

EIGHT TABS

Start Here — what to do, in four steps.
Setup — what you charge an hour, chargeable hours in your day, fuel price, rental day rate. Six numbers.
Vans — one row per vehicle: what you paid, what you still owe, odometer at the start of the year and today, insurance, plates, depreciation, resale value.
Fuel — every fill-up. The sheet works out the miles between fills, your real miles per gallon, and flags an odometer typed backwards.
Shop Bills — every service, tire and repair, with the column that changes the answer: days off the road. Each bill gets a second figure beside it — the work you could not do.
Cost Per Mile — the whole stack on one page: fuel, repairs, insurance, plates, finance, value lost, rental cover, downtime. Divided by the miles.
Keep or Replace — each van against a replacement you have actually been quoted for, with what the old one is worth, how long the switch takes to pay for itself, and a one-word verdict.
Dashboard — four numbers, two charts, one sentence.

THE WORKED EXAMPLE

A five-van plumbing and heating company, twelve months, 260 fill-ups and 56 shop bills. The 2016 van is paid off, has the lowest depreciation of the five, and costs $2.51 a mile. The 2023 van on $642 a month costs $0.93. The old one spent 28 working days on a lift: $15,650 in repairs, and $21,280 of work that never happened. Replacing it saves $24,883 a year, and the switch pays for itself in eighteen months.

WHAT IS IN THE DOWNLOAD

Three files, instantly.
01 — the workbook, filled in with the worked example.
02 — the same workbook, blank, ready for your fleet.
00 — a plain-English guide: what to fill in, in what order, and how to read the verdict.

1,031 formulas, eight tabs, two charts. No macros.

WHO IT IS FOR

Plumbers, electricians, HVAC, landscapers, builders, mobile mechanics, couriers — anyone running two to ten vans who has never actually costed them.

WHERE IT RUNS

Built as .xlsx. Opens in Excel 2016 and later on Windows and Mac. For Google Sheets use File, Import, Upload. Formulas and charts carry over. Nothing to install, no add-on, no subscription.

HONEST LIMITS — PLEASE READ

- It does not connect to telematics, a fuel card or your accounting software. You type the figures in.
- Depreciation is an estimate and it is meant to be. The same logic is applied to the replacement, so the comparison still holds.
- It costs a vehicle, not a job. It will not tell you which customer is unprofitable.
- If you leave the days-off-the-road column blank, this is only a maintenance log.
- The example fleet is invented. The arithmetic behind it is not.

HOW THIS SHOP WORKS

I never ask for shop access. No password, no manager invite, no app permissions. You buy a file, you download it, it is yours. If something in it does not work, message me and I will fix the file.

Instant download. Nothing is posted to you.