I sat down with Facundo Tassara on the Fleet Success Show last week, and I want to keep the dialogue running on something we got into on the episode. Many fleet leaders, or their financial overseers, have a tough time admitting this reality:

The invoice from your repair shop accounts for only 30 to 40 percent of the actual repair cost.

The remaining 60 percent is hiding in places your accounting software, fleet software, or FMC was never designed to look, or flat out can't see.

Where the other 60 percent lands

When a truck breaks down, somebody (or telematics) notices. Somebody arranges a tow, somebody finds and speaks with a shop (assuming you connect on the first call), someone moves the vehicle to the shop. Then on day four someone calls again to get a status update on a repair that should have taken a day. Someone else tries to find a back-up vehicle to fill the downed truck's void. Another person explains to a customer why the project is behind schedule.

Every one of those bodies costs money and delays. None of that shows up on the invoice.

Then there is the vehicle itself, sitting in a shop's lot, not earning. Every day it's not on the road is a number in the red. Most fleets I talk to have struggled to put a real dollar figure on a day or hour of downtime. They feel it, they know it exists, they just can't measure it.

There is also the repair itself. Was it the right repair? Did the shop replace something that didn't need replacing? Did the shop follow your repair schedule and audit rules? Did they miss something which downs the truck three weeks later? Without visibility into the work, you can't answer those questions. You're forced to blindly trust a process you have almost no visibility, oversight, or governance over.

The "cheap shop" trap

Fleets are constantly told to negotiate harder, find cheaper vendors, drive labor rates down and parts discounts up. On the invoice, that strategy works. Lower numbers, slightly smaller bills, a hollow victory.

The cheaper shop is often the one that takes longer, accepting work when they're out of capacity, only to work on it when convenient for them. They may do shoddy work, not use quality parts, find "extra" work (how many air filters and wipers do you really need per month?), or send the truck back twice for the same issue. The savings on the line item get eaten alive by the downtime, the rework, and the hours your team spends managing a vendor instead of running the fleet and having a good shop partner that works with your needs.

I've watched fleets "save" on fixed costs but lose far more on uptime. That $30 oil change ends up costing 20 times more.

The word that changes everything

If you take one thing away, take this: transparency.

Not software. Not dashboards. Transparency, as in: do you know, right now, where every one of your vehicles is in the repair process? Do you know what's been authorized, what's been completed, how long those stages took, and how the final bill compares to the estimate? Do you know which shops finish on time and which ones don't? Can you compare shop performance? Your manager's speed to approve?

If the answer is "kind of" or "we'd have to ask someone," that's the gap. That gap is where the missing 60 percent lives. You cannot reduce a cost you cannot see and are not measuring.

What moves the number

You don't fix this by squeezing vendors harder. You just may inadvertently force a great shop into becoming below average for you specifically.

You fill the gap by changing or enabling what you measure. Track time-in-shop the same way you track invoice totals or in-house technicians. Track repeat repairs by shop, or frequency of parts delays per shop or per vehicle type. Track the gap between estimate and final bill. Track approval speed, time from start of repair to repair complete. Track downtime in dollars, not days.

Once you access that data, you may stop chasing the cheapest shop or trying to turn repair into a commodity, and instead start choosing the one that matches your priorities. They're almost never the same shop.

The repair invoice is a receipt. It's not the cost. Stop running your fleet off the receipt.

I'll close with this

Many years ago, another lifetime, I used to skydive for fun on the weekends. We had a regular schedule (legally driven) to remove, inspect, and repack my reserve parachute, the last line of defense between living or dying. The FAA certified rigger who maintained my reserve always semi-jokingly asked, "speed, quality, or price, pick any two." I always chose quality and speed. I happily paid a little more to get back in the sky fast, with a rig I could trust to bet my life 5-10x per weekend. (Thanks rigger Pete!)

25-year-old me would have never guessed that lesson (and strategy) would be so relevant many years later.

Watch the full conversation below. Thanks to RTA:The Fleet Success Company for hosting this great chat.

On the road and can't watch? Give it a listen on Spotify.