Blanket (whole fleet)
EstimateReplace wear items on every cart on a fixed cadence, regardless of site or usage.
- PM program cost
- $54,000
- Reactive cost avoided
- $5,400
- Net
- −$48,600
- Prevention rate to break even
- 600%
Not cost-neutral
E. Cost-neutrality
The strategy matters more than the intervention
Same PM tasks, three different rollout models. Only one clears the bar where avoided reactive cost is at least the cost of the PM program itself.
Estimate
Targeted (hot sites)
EstimatePM only at the stores/retailers driving the most reactive dispatches.
- PM program cost
- $6,480
- Reactive cost avoided
- $5,400
- Net
- −$1,080
- Prevention rate to break even
- 72%
Not cost-neutral
Opportunistic (bundled)
EstimatePM tasks piggy-back on trips we're already making — no extra dispatch cost.
- PM program cost
- $2,400
- Reactive cost avoided
- $5,400
- Net
- $3,000
- Prevention rate to break even
- 27%
Cost-neutral
Why the strategy matters
A PM program is cost-neutral when the reactive dollars it avoids are at least the dollars it costs to run. The lever isn't the part — it's the trip. Blanket replacement pays for a lot of visits that would never have failed. Targeted narrows that gap by concentrating on hot sites. Opportunistic pencils out because the PM task piggy-backs on a visit we're already paying for, so the marginal cost is small.
Where the numbers come from
Same inputs across all three strategies — only the rollout model changes. Anchors are drawn from the ticket + invoice sample so the comparison is apples-to-apples.
- Fleet size
- ~1,800 carts
- Avg reactive dispatch
- $566
- Preventable failures / yr
- ~30 dispatches
- Reactive $ in scope
- ~$17k / yr
- Prevention rate
- ~30% assumed
- Avoided reactive $
- $5,400
Working assumption for the modeled deployment footprint. Editable once Finance confirms.
Measured from the Sep 2025 – Feb 2026 Kept invoice sample. Mostly trip + labor; parts are a minority of the bill.
Floor estimate from tagged Freshdesk tickets in the wear-item categories (wheels, scale, bumpers). Only ~26% of tickets are component-tagged, so this is conservative.
30 dispatches × $566. This is the pool the PM program is trying to displace, not the whole reactive budget.
Share of those dispatches a scheduled PM touch would actually catch. Held constant across strategies so the rollout model is what varies.
$17k × 30% prevention rate. Same figure for all three strategies — the ceiling on what any PM model can save at these assumptions.
Blanket — $54,000 PM cost
~1,800 carts × ~$30 bundled PM labor per cart per year (wheel torque-check + scale self-test cadence). Every cart gets the touch, whether or not it was going to fail. Break-even would require preventing 6× more dispatches than the data suggests exist.
Targeted — $6,480 PM cost
Concentrates on the ~12% of stores driving the majority of reactive tickets (see Retailer drilldown). Fewer carts touched, but each visit is still a dedicated PM trip — so trip cost dominates. Narrows the gap; doesn't close it on its own.
Opportunistic — $2,400 PM cost
Bundled onto trips we're already dispatching. Precedent in the data: Nicholas checked scale calibration on 7 carts in a single 4.6-hour visit (~$26/cart of labor, no extra trip). At that unit cost, the program is cost-positive even at the conservative 30% prevention rate.
Break-even prevention rate = PM cost ÷ (dispatches in scope × $566). It's the share of the ~30 preventable dispatches a strategy would need to catch before it pays for itself. Blanket needs 600% (impossible — more than exist); Opportunistic clears the bar at 27%.