Downtime is usually the biggest line
Run the defaults and next year of keeping breaks down as $3,200 of repairs, $3,060 of days off the road, $1,620 of value lost and $600 of extra fuel. The downtime line is nearly as large as the repair line, and it is the one that never appears on any invoice. Nine days at $340 is what the work was worth on the days the van was on a lift, and the only way to see it is to write it down.
That changes what the answer means. If downtime dominates, replacing the van is one solution and it is not the only one — a spare vehicle, a shop that stocks your parts, or a standing arrangement with a hire company all buy the same availability for a different price. The spare vehicle calculator prices that alternative directly.
Why the crossover is a year and not a rule
The half-the-value rule compares one repair quote to one resale figure. Both are point-in-time numbers and the decision is about a duration, so the comparison keeps producing confident wrong answers. What actually matters is the cost of the next twelve months on each path, and that only crosses over once the compounding repair and downtime lines catch the flat annual cost of the alternative.
On the opening figures that happens in year 4: keeping costs $11,778.60 that year against $11,520 to run a replacement. Years one through three all favour keeping, and by a wide margin in year one. That is a different conclusion from the one most people reach by looking at a $3,200 repair year and a $9,000 van.
The number the projection cannot supply
Everything rests on the growth rate, and one year of history compounded forward is a thin foundation. Pull three years of repair invoices for the vehicle and look at the actual shape — many vans do not rise smoothly, they sit flat and then take one large step when a driveline or an emissions component goes. If your history looks like that, run this page twice: once with a modest growth rate for the flat years and once with the step priced in as a single large repair year.
For the value side, car depreciation works the resale curve out from age and mileage. For a single quote against a single replacement, without the projection, repair or replace does the simpler version of the same comparison.
Related pages
Car ownership cost totals a year of running a vehicle including the lines this page leaves out, and cost per mile is where the per-mile figures come from. The maintenance schedule guide covers the routine side that this page deliberately excludes.
Questions people ask
Should routine servicing go in the repair figure?
No. Put in the unplanned work only — the breakdowns, the parts that failed, the tow. Routine servicing is a cost you pay on any vehicle including the replacement, so putting it on the keep side alone tilts the comparison. If your replacement would genuinely service cheaper, express that difference in its own repairs-per-year field rather than inflating the old van.
How do I put a number on a day off the road?
Take whichever route you would actually take on the day. If you would hire a vehicle in, it is the day rate plus the time lost collecting it. If you would turn work away, it is the revenue of a normal day less the fuel and materials you did not spend. Both are your own figures. The point of writing it down is that a van that is off the road four times a year is expensive in a way that never shows on a repair invoice.
What if I would not finance a replacement?
Then the cost-to-own field is depreciation rather than a payment: what the replacement would lose in value over a year, plus the interest you gave up by putting the cash into a van. That is the honest figure either way. A vehicle bought outright is not free to own, it is just paying for itself out of a different pocket, and treating it as free is the most common way this comparison gets rigged in favour of buying.
Why is the replacement held flat when the old van compounds?
Because holding it flat is transparent and adding a second growth curve would bury the answer under two assumptions instead of one. It does flatter the replacement in the later years of a long projection, which is one reason six years is usually far enough. If you want the fair version, run the page a second time with the replacement figures in the old-van fields and read where its own curve would be by then.
Does this say anything about writing the purchase off?
Nothing at all, deliberately. How a vehicle purchase is treated, what can be deducted, over what period and whether financing changes any of it are decided by the rules that apply to your business and by whoever prepares your accounts. Those rules can move the answer substantially in either direction, which is exactly why this page keeps them out and hands the comparison to an accountant to finish.