For most heavy contractors, heavy equipment fleets represent one of the largest capital investments on the balance sheet. Beyond the initial acquisition cost, fleets carry substantial financial weight in maintenance, fuel, insurance, and depreciation.

In an era of tight margins and intense competition, fleet performance and efficiency directly influence profitability. Fleets drive productivity, enable revenue, and represent a critical component of profitability.

While most companies track equipment costs internally, many struggle to answer a more strategic question: How do our fleet financials compare to industry peers?

To help construction financial leaders evaluate their fleet performance relative to peers, the Heavy Equipment Comparator — developed jointly by CFMA and AEMP — offers standardized benchmarking metrics that will help contractors compare fleet-related financial and operational KPIs.

Participation isn’t just about comparison—it’s about gaining strategic clarity.

What the Heavy Equipment Comparator Offers

The Heavy Equipment Comparator consolidates 26 industry[YA1] -standard KPIs across seven performance categories, giving financial professionals and fleet managers a unified platform for benchmarking fleet performance.

The metrics span key areas such as:

• Cost and financial metrics: cost per dollar of revenue, cost per hour, ownership vs. operational cost breakdown, return on assets
• Utilization: annual machine hours, idle time ratios, downtime
• Maintenance and reliability: preventive maintenance compliance, repair costs as a percentage of replacement value, mean time between failures
• Asset health: fleet age, replacement ratios, overall availability
• Other drivers: labor efficiency, planning and scheduling, utilization

All submitted data is anonymized and aggregated, ensuring confidentiality while delivering actionable, benchmarked insights. Companies receive downloadable PDFs, peer group comparison reports, and subscription access for deeper analysis.

Why Financial Leaders Should Participate

Highlight Inefficiencies

Internal reports may show stable year-over-year trends — but they don’t reveal whether your fleet operations are Best-in-Class or underperforming.

Benchmarking shines a light on areas where the company might be overspending repair and maintenance costs at 16.5% of revenue vs. industry average of 12%, offering insight into what areas a company might dive into in order to reduce costs.

The metrics used in the Heavy Equipment Comparator can help a contractor capture how effective each dollar invested in the fleet program actually is. This allows CFOs to translate fleet operations into clear ROI measures — whether each maintenance dollar is extending asset life, reducing downtime, or generating productivity.

For example, by reviewing preventive and predictive maintenance benchmarks, companies can determine whether their maintenance strategies are reducing downtime and extending asset life, or simply consuming resources without improving performance.

Drive Smarter Capital Expenditure Budgeting

Fleet assets drive working capital. The Heavy Equipment Comparator delivers data-driven insights into optimal replacement cycles and equipment utilization, helping CFOs align capital expenditure strategies with actual performance benchmarks and improving return on assets.

The results of the utilization metrics can help a contractor answer multiple questions.

• Do we own more equipment than we need?
• Are jobs hoarding machines?
• Are we experiencing downtime due to the frequency of needed repairs?
• Is the age of our fleet affecting productivity and performance?

By quantifying the information, a contractor can turn anecdotal suspicions into measurable data, allowing for more ROI-driven fleet decisions.

Identify Risk & Strengthen Resilience

Benchmarking maintenance, preventive scheduling, and reliability provides an early warning system for productivity and safety risks. These insights allow financial leaders to take proactive measures that protect both people and profit.

The Heavy Equipment Comparator strengthens this process by showing how effective a company’s maintenance efforts truly are — turning day-to-day work into measurable results that can be tracked, compared, and improved.

For example, when a proper preventive and predictive maintenance system is not used, a company may experience a higher level of downtime when compared to others across the industry. The Heavy Equipment Comparator might help companies identify a lagging preventive program.

Gain Outside Validation

For finance leaders and fleet managers alike, having an external point of reference is critical. Internal reports can show whether costs are moving up or down, but they rarely answer the bigger question: Are we performing at the right level compared to our peers?

By benchmarking against industry standards, contractors can confirm whether their heavy equipment fleet program is delivering value or falling short. Finance leaders can validate heavy equipment fleet strategies when reporting to owners, corporate boards, or lenders. Fleet managers can support investment requests with credible, industry-backed data. And finally, Executive teams can ensure that equipment decisions align with both operational and financial needs.

Key Dates to Note

To participate effectively, here are the important deadlines and support opportunities:

• Data Submission Deadline for the 2025 Benchmarking Cohort: November 17
• Webinar: October 14 — An informative session to walk through KPI definitions, data collection tips, and how to interpret benchmark results.
• Virtual Interactive Help Sessions [CC4] [YA5] with subject-matter experts — These are opportunities for real-time guidance on completing your submission, understanding comparator outputs, and integrating insights into your financial workflows.
  • October 17
  • October 30
• Registration & Submission Portal: https://hecomparator.com

A CFO Case Example

Mid-sized Contractor “BuildRight Inc.” implements the Heavy Equipment Comparator:

• They discovered their maintenance spend is 16.5% of revenue when compared to the peer average of 12%.
• This discrepancy translates to approximately $1 million in avoidable annual costs.
• Armed with benchmark data, finance and operations collaboratively redesign preventive maintenance schedules, optimize replacement cycles, and renegotiate service contracts.

The result: tangible cost savings, stronger bid positioning, and enhanced fleet reliability — demonstrating the ROI of participation.

Building a Culture of Financial & Operational Excellence

Benchmarking provides companies with more than data — it fosters a mindset of continuous improvement. By setting benchmark-based targets, financial teams elevate status quo thinking and empower:

• Executives and owners with data-backed performance narratives
• Fleet managers with clarity around priorities and cost drivers
• Finance teams with budgeting insights that align cap-ex with performance results

For CFMA members, participation reflects a commitment to advancing financial stewardship across the construction sector.

Industry-Level Impact

As more companies engage with the Heavy Equipment Comparator, benchmarks become more precise, informative, and useful. A robust participation rate strengthens peer group comparisons and ensures the data reflects the actual workings of the industry.

Submit your fleet data by November 17 to gain critical visibility into your equipment ROI, cost structures, utilization, and reliability.

• Join the webinar on October 14 to prep your team and clarify metric collection.
• Drop into virtual interactive help sessions (Sept. 26; Oct. 17, 30) for tailored support.
• Visit the portal to register or log in: https://hecomparator.com

Turning fleet data into actionable insight is no longer a best practice, it’s a necessity for today’s CFO. The Heavy Equipment Comparator is an opportunity to see where you stand and where you can improve.