Modern Vehicle Life Expectancies

[andy]

Whilst chatting in another thread about N registered Scanias outliving V registered B6BLE's seemingly effortlessly, I began thinking about how life expectancy on more recently built buses has dwindled over the years.

If you loook at the MCW, Leyland and Dennis products of the 60's 70's and 80's, they tended to last at least 20 years and if not more, with maybe 2 major overhauls during this lifespan.

Now in the last couple of years it has been difficult to draw a comparison due to the fact that many relatively young vehicles have been getting the chop due to being step entrance.  But now we are seeing low floor vehicles such as Darts, Merc 0405's, Spectras, B10's and B6's and Scanias routinely withdrawn after as little as 13 or 14 years service.

I'm interested to get to the bottom of why this is.  Here are some of the possible theories I have thought about:

1. Cost of overhaul. Is it more cost and labour intensive these days to carry out a full overhaul on these vehicles in the same way that WMPTE used to do with Fleetlines and Metrobuses at Tyburn Road? I know that not as many companies like to have the facilities and staff on their books these days but they did used to get seemingly an extra 35% of life from their fleets? What is the maths on this? Bearing in mind that there is a competitve market of subcontractors out there for this type of work.

2. Build of vehicles. Does the low floor specification of modern buses create a sacrifice in the body design and therefore durability and performance in the long run, shortening its life? If this is the case surely Manufacturers would price them more competitively than they appear to do so as in my view initial vehicle cost has actually increased very quickly.

3. Mileage or use of vehicle.  Are the buses simply worked harder these days? With longer average operating hours and more trips completed in the hours they are out, less layover time and less peak time boards with down time in garage in off peak?

4. Driving style and increased power of torque. This one is probably self explanatory, do these factors expire the chassis and major structural components any quicker than on the older vehicles?

5. Competitive fleet replacement schemes / More credit.  Is it easier and more cost effective these days for operators to take in new vehicles? This seems unlikely as margins are tighter than ever before and vehicles have to pay for themselves on paper with detailed costing going into where they go and what they run on.  Has warranty and after sales service improved to the point where there is a distinct cost benefit in replacing these days?

6. Environmental requirements. I've included this but I can't see it being such a major factor anymore as conversion and updating is much easier these days than when emissions regulations first came in.

Or is it simply that they don't make them like they used to? Again this makes little sense as technology and materials have moved on so much over the last decade or so and vehicles appear to be more durable and reliable than ever.

What do people think?

[Justin Tyme]

An interesting subject to discuss!

First, did MCW, Leyland and Dennis products of the 60's 70's and 80's tend to last at least 20 years?

Some types could and did last that long, but usually only with either major rebuilding/re-engineering or after several years on "light" duties.  West Midlands PTE worked towards a 12 year life, as did the National Bus Company (later extended to 16 years).  Midland Red's BMMO buses from the mid-1950s onwards were lightweight and built for a 12 year life.  Minibuses were not built to last long, and I don't think Darts were built for very long lives either.

Second, it could be argued that most buses that did achieve 20 years shouldn't have stayed in use for that long.  If they weren't looking jaded (e.g. NXWM's last Metrobuses usually the case), they were simply obsolete (e.g. WMPTE's ex-Birmingham rear-entrance Guy and Daimlers in the 1970s).  Cars aren't built to last 20 years, so why should buses be?

I expect most of the theories andy raises are valid.  In particular: -

1.  Buses are no longer designed for mid-life overhauls.  This is probably related to a change in legislation in the 1980s.  New buses used to be given 7-year "Certificates of Fitness", which made mid-life overhauls good sense.  Now they have annual MOTs, so thorough examinations and remedial work each year have replaced virtual rebuilding once or twice in a bus's life.

3.  There are fewer peak-only boards than there used to be some years ago.  In Birmingham into the early PTE years, the peak vehicle requirement was about three times the off-peak requirement.

[winston]

I think a number of the factors mentioned are applicable:

1 - Step entrance Darts/early Dart SLF's at least were never designed to last as long in service as some that still see regular use with large bus groups & smaller independents
2 - Buses are worked far harder these days, some being worked 18 hrs per day / 7 days per week. Fewer spare buses are allocated resulting in reduced rest days
3 - Environmental factors to a degree in London, but generally the constant need to reduce fuel consumption is another main driver for choosing more fuel efficient / lighter weight / smaller engined buses as replacements for older heavy duty buses
4 - The latest DIPTAC legislation with all buses being wheelchair accessible and having to comply by certain dates
5 - The majority of the central works that used to undertake the overhauls have all been closed down. Also with buses now being far more complex & technically advanced, to re-engine them & extensively refurbish/rebuild them isn't so cost effective against buying brand new, due to the number of extra years service required from them to pay for the re-builds

[The Real 4778]

I think we've missed one of the most important variables, which is the economic and organisational environment.

The buses of the '60s and '70s were by and large bought outright by PTEs, using public (ratepayers') money.  They would then sit on the councils' balance sheets and be depreciated over a fairly long period. 

Leasing came along later, coinciding with deregulation, reorganisation of the industry and wholesale sell-off of the big council fleets.  Access to cheap money to lease the fleet and replace at more regular intervals has been a by-product of UK economics post-'79.

[nitromatt1]

I was told some Streetlites have a life expectancy of as little as 2 years!

[Tony]

I was told some Streetlites have a life expectancy of as little as 2 years!

Well you have been told rubbish! No operator could afford a depriciation rate of around £50.000 per year

[nitromatt1]

I was told some Streetlites have a life expectancy of as little as 2 years!

Well you have been told rubbish! No operator could afford a depriciation rate of around £50.000 per year

Yes, I thought it seemed poor, especially as Wright products seem to age more gracefully than their equivalents, e.g. our Liberators vs our Mercs

What is the real life expectancy of a Streetlite?

[Tony]

I was told some Streetlites have a life expectancy of as little as 2 years!

Well you have been told rubbish! No operator could afford a depriciation rate of around £50.000 per year

Yes, I thought it seemed poor, especially as Wright products seem to age more gracefully than their equivalents, e.g. our Liberators vs our Mercs

What is the real life expectancy of a Streetlite?

It will depend on different operators, I would imagine Wrights will be hoping for about 15 years out of them, but with a completely new design something major may go wrong that wasn't planned, Remember Marshall Mnibuses?

The two years you have probably heard may be some of the Mistral Rental Streetlites where an operator will lease them from Mistral for the initial two years. That is not the 'life expectancy of the vehicle though, \mistral will be hoping to re-lease them or sell them after those two years.

Life expectancy is normally the number of years an operator will write off the initial purchase price over. If they get taken out of service before they have been fully depriciated then they still have a 'book value' which the operator will hope to get back if they sell them on the second hand market. A vehicle may have its life extended by a major refurbishment. The additional cost of this is then added to the book value and written off over a longer period

[Justin Tyme]

I think we've missed one of the most important variables, which is the economic and organisational environment.

The buses of the '60s and '70s were by and large bought outright by PTEs, using public (ratepayers') money.  They would then sit on the councils' balance sheets and be depreciated over a fairly long period. 

Leasing came along later, coinciding with deregulation, reorganisation of the industry and wholesale sell-off of the big council fleets.  Access to cheap money to lease the fleet and replace at more regular intervals has been a by-product of UK economics post-'79.

It may have been a bit more complicated pre-1979.  PTEs (including WMPTE) worked towards a 12-year life, and eventually reached it in the early 1980s.

Leasing was around in the 1970s, and the National Bus Company did use it to a limited extent as a way of getting more for their money - although in a different way to nowadays.  Operators would buy their new buses, and then sell some of them to leasing companies (which may have been owned by NBC??) for "permanent" hire back to them.

Certainly leasing really took off after Deregulation.  I think one of the best known early examples was when Badgerline 'bought' its first new vehicles after privatisation - they were in fact leased from Volvo and (for a while) maintained by Volvo dealers.  Leasing became increasingly used when tendered services required new buses, and is used by Stagecoach for its new London buses.  This will have the double advantage of being able to let them go at the end of a contract and not having to cascade them to reluctant provincial Stagecoach companies.

[Abluhwleh]

I was told some Streetlites have a life expectancy of as little as 2 years!

Well you have been told rubbish! No operator could afford a depriciation rate of around £50.000 per year

Yes, I thought it seemed poor, especially as Wright products seem to age more gracefully than their equivalents, e.g. our Liberators vs our Mercs

What is the real life expectancy of a Streetlite?

It will depend on different operators, I would imagine Wrights will be hoping for about 15 years out of them, but with a completely new design something major may go wrong that wasn't planned, Remember Marshall Mnibuses?

The two years you have probably heard may be some of the Mistral Rental Streetlites where an operator will lease them from Mistral for the initial two years. That is not the 'life expectancy of the vehicle though, \mistral will be hoping to re-lease them or sell them after those two years.

Life expectancy is normally the number of years an operator will write off the initial purchase price over. If they get taken out of service before they have been fully depriciated then they still have a 'book value' which the operator will hope to get back if they sell them on the second hand market. A vehicle may have its life extended by a major refurbishment. The additional cost of this is then added to the book value and written off over a longer period

That Marshall Minibuses reference sounds like a good story, would like to hear that one...