| Mercury
Fleet Management Consultants |
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Fleet Replacement Consulting and Planning
Services and Forecasting Software
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Virtually every public and private organization in the world that has a fleet
operation invests significant recourses, both financial and personnel, towards
the timely replacement of vehicles and equipment. Regardless if the assets are
used for the utility management, student transportation, street maintenance,
state and local government, waste disposal, military defense, rail, parcel
delivery, or local transit services, the costs of replacing these resources can
equal to millions of dollars.
Many organizations attempt to project the near and long-term vehicle (and/or
other fixed asset) replacement costs, depreciation costs, residual values,
funding requirements under alternative financing approaches, and replacement
charge-back rates. However, this is a fairly complex task, due to the intricate
quantitative mathematical, economic, and accounting methodologies involved in
developing a replacement plan, but also the realities of political environments
and organizational cultures that can impact the decision to replace vehicles and
equipment in an appropriate time frame.
The fleet management consultants at Mercury understand these issues intimately,
which is we have assisted many organizations in determining the best way to
finance the replacement of capital assets such as vehicles and motorized
equipment, and to assist them in managing a systematic asset replacement program
on an ongoing basis. We have found over a period of almost 20 years of
management consulting that the single biggest impediment to replacing vehicles
and other capital assets in a timely manner is not a lack of understanding of
life cycle costing principles and their impact on the optimization of asset
service lives and replacement schedules, but a lack of funds to retire and
replace assets in accordance with life cycle costing-based policies or
guidelines. This lack of funds stems from the fact that the aggregate,
year-to-year replacement costs of most inventories of vehicles and other assets
are variable – sometimes markedly so – and some asset financing approaches are
more effective than others in securing funds to accommodate peaks and valleys in
replacement spending needs.
As such Mercury has developed asset replacement planning software that provides
the following features.
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Definition
of asset replacement guidelines and planning parameters by type or class
of asset, including replacement cycle in years and miles or hours of use;
purchase price; purchase price inflation rate; debt financing term (the
maximum period of time over which the acquisition of an asset can be
financed); and debt financing interest rate. These parameters can be
defined and stored in the program for an unlimited number of asset
classes. In our experience, most organizations categorize their
inventories of fleet vehicles and equipment with anywhere from 20 to 150
classes.
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Development
of a 20-year asset replacement plan that projects future replacement dates
and costs by individual asset, using the user-defined parameters above and
an inventory of these assets that is imported to the program from the
user’s fleet management or asset management system. The maximum size of
the inventory of assets for which a replacement plan can be developed is
unlimited. A good replacement plan should also computes year-by-year
depreciation costs for each asset in the inventory and asset residual
value each time an asset is replaced during the 20-year planning period.
Residual values are computed using a mathematical asset market value
depreciation function derived from industry data.
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Quantification of aggregate asset replacement funding requirements by year
for the 20-year planning period, under three replacement financing
approaches; cash, revolving fund, and lease purchasing.
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In addition to providing asset replacement and financial forecasting solutions,
we offer comprehensive fleet management consulting services. The following are some of
the vehicle and equipment replacement planning services.
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- Vehicle and Equipment Equivalency Benchmarking
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- Motor Pool, Lease, and Asset Purchasing Analysis
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- Asset Classification and Lifecycle Assessments
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- Expert Presentation of Plan Criteria and Findings
to Administration
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- Alternative Funding Strategies : Bonds, Commercial
Paper, Lease Purchase, Certificates of Participation
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For more information about our fleet replacement planning
and consulting services, please contact us by email at
contactme@mercury-assoc.com or by phone
240-631-6780 |
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Attn:
Vehicle and Equipment Replacement Planning
Mercury
Associates, Inc.
Asset
Replacement Planning Services
7701 Shady
Brook Lane
Gaithersburg, Maryland 20879
Phone/ FAX:
240-631-6780 |
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Mercury also provides
general fleet operations and management services. |
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