Vehicle Fleet Retirement Decision-making: Policies, Models And Software Package

Vehicles are basic tools of land transport. Vehicle fleet maintenance management directly affects the economic efficiency of a transportation enterprise. Traditional vehicle management focuses on technical manage- ment and initial investment. The decision-maker expects to spend less and obtain more and pays little attention to the operational and maintenance costs. They retire the vehicles according to the national policies of scrape, and not based on the vehicles'actual situation. Without considering the vehicles'performance level, operating conditions and other factors, it will result in the situation where the vehicles that should retire remain running and the vehicles that can continue run are scrapped.This thesis applies a technical-economic approach to the optimal vehicle retirement decision problem. The approach is based on life cycle cost analysis. Life cycle cost analysis is first introduced. On the basis of field investigation, the factors that influence vehicle's life cycle cost are then analyzed, and a cost decomposition structure of vehicle is developed. It also deals with prediction for the future operating and maintenance costs of vehicles. The optimal retirement time is obtained by minimizing the cost rate. The developed model is applied to a postal vehicle fleet, and it is shown that the life cycle cost -based retirement decision-making method is reasonable. Finally, a software package has been developed, which is written using Excel VBA.