AA puts vehicle downtime at the centre of fleet resilience

An AA vehicle on a winding road, surrounded by picturesque scenery

The AA has used Fleet & Mobility Live 2026 to launch a new report focused on one of the most expensive problems facing fleet operators: keeping vehicles on the road.

Its Keeping Business Moving: Minimising Downtime, Optimising Performance Yellow Paper argues that vehicle-off-road time should be treated as a wider business risk rather than simply a maintenance issue. A vehicle being unavailable can affect productivity, customer commitments, replacement-vehicle costs and pressure on drivers and fleet teams.

The scale of that impact is significant. Research conducted by Opinium for Mercedes-Benz Vans earlier this year found that UK businesses lose an average of £1172 per van for every day it is unavailable, while businesses experienced an average of six-and-a-half days of disruption over the previous 12 months.

The AA's report also highlights the growing role of connected-vehicle data, proactive maintenance and earlier identification of emerging problems in reducing avoidable downtime. Driver wellbeing is part of the equation too, recognising that disruption can put additional pressure on the people responsible for keeping operations moving.

For fleet managers, the practical lesson is to move from measuring downtime after it happens to identifying the conditions that create it.

That means combining maintenance history and vehicle-health data, acting on recurring faults earlier and measuring the total operational cost of VOR, rather than only the workshop invoice.

With ageing vehicles, technician shortages and parts availability adding further pressure, protecting uptime is increasingly becoming a fleet-resilience strategy rather than simply an SMR task.

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