91TV

Wesley Hall, CTP

For waste haulers, environmental services companies, and utility fleet operators running heavy-duty trucks — from rear-loaders and roll-offs to vacuum trucks and oil field waste transport units — the age of their truck equipment is a known risk, an open item on the balance sheet. But new data reveals a more troubling gap: executives across the waste and utility sectors are watching their safety performance erode in real time, while tracking the wrong metrics to stop it.Ìý

The Uncomfortable Number Nobody Is TrackingÌý

A recent , compiled from responses that span across U.S. organizations with heavy-duty truck fleets, including waste and utility operators, shows that 58.62% of organizations are operating Class-8 trucks model year 2019 or older. Nearly 41% of those fleets have between 1 and 25 aging units running in their network, while 31% are managing 26 to 50 older trucks on a daily basis.Ìý

That is not a small problem buried at the edge of operations. For waste and utility companies, pre-2020 trucks are running fixed collection routes, responding to service calls, and hauling regulated materials daily — accumulating miles, and adding incremental risk with each passing quarter.Ìý

When those same executives were asked whether aging equipment had impacted their fleet’s safety performance, 75% said yes — 41% said it had slightly impacted safety, 34% said moderately, and 10% said significantly. Only one-quarter of respondents reported no impact at all.Ìý

Read that again: three out of four leaders have already seen safety performance degrade from older equipment. For waste haulers and utility fleets operating daily in residential neighborhoods, along public rights-of-way, and at regulated disposal and transfer facilities, the problem is not theoretical. It is happening in active waste and utility fleets today.Ìý

A Dangerous Blind Spot Between Operations and FinanceÌý

Here is where the data turns genuinely alarming. When asked which key performance indicators they track most closely, executives ranked Fuel Economy (79%) and Maintenance Cost per Mile (72%) as their top two metrics. These are reasonable, important numbers to manage. But scroll down the list of KPIs and you’ll find the Safety Score is nearly invisible: only 3.45% of organizations formally track it.Ìý

The implication is hard to overstate. The majority of waste and utility fleet operators have acknowledged that older trucks are degrading their safety outcomes, yet fewer than 1-in-28 are measuring safety performance as a tracked business metric. Fuel economy and maintenance costs are being managed with precision while safety drifts, unmeasured, in the background.Ìý

This is not a failure of intent. 91TV and utility fleet leaders clearly understand that safety matters — their operations are under constant public and regulatory scrutiny. The gap is structural: the financial and operational KPIs dominating fleet dashboards are not connecting to the safety outcomes those same organizations are already experiencing on the road.Ìý

What CSA Scores Are Already Telling Insurers — Whether You’re Listening or NotÌý

Every roadside inspection, every violation, every reportable crash feeds into a fleet’s , a public record that shippers, brokers, and insurers consult routinely. Older equipment tends to generate more vehicle maintenance violations: brake defects, lighting failures, and tire issues. Each one raises your Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories (BASIC) scores. Each BASIC score increase triggers greater inspection frequency, reduced shipper confidence, and, compounding the pain, higher insurance premiums.Ìý

The commercial trucking insurance market is under severe pressure. According to the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI), , following a 12.5% spike in 2023. — have increased by 235% since 2012, and insurers are now scrutinizing safety records, telematics data, and compliance histories before issuing coverage. .Ìý

For a waste or utility operator running a large percentage of pre-2020 trucks, this is not an abstract future risk. It is a present-day cost being absorbed, often without a clear line of sight connecting aging collection and service equipment to the insurance line item on the P&L.Ìý

The 2027 AEB Mandate Is Closing the WindowÌý

The regulatory landscape is about to make this gap significantly more expensive to ignore. , per NHTSA and FMCSA rulemaking finalized in early 2025. The technology is projected to .Ìý

Critically, regulators have confirmed that there will be no retrofit requirement, as older trucks already in service are not required to be upgraded. This may sound like relief, but it is actually a liability accelerant. As of the 2027 model year, every truck that rolls off the line will have AEB as a baseline standard. 91TV haulers and utility operators continuing to run 2019 and older collection and service vehicles will be operating units that lack the safety architecture that the industry, and the courts, will increasingly treat as unfavorable.Ìý

In litigation, that delta matters. . Once AEB becomes a federal standard on new vehicles, the argument that an organization with a transportation fleet knowingly continued operating older equipment without equivalent protection will become far more powerful in front of a jury.Ìý

The Operations-Finance Divide Is a Strategic Priority — And a Safety RiskÌý

The survey data surfaces one more insight worth close attention. When asked about strategic priorities for the next several years, 38% of waste and utility fleet executives said increasing organizational capability to scale more efficiently was a top goal. Yet only 10% identified improving cross-departmental alignment as a priority.Ìý

That asymmetry is significant. The safety-to-finance connection, the chain of causality that runs from equipment age to CSA scores to insurance premiums to total cost of ownership, requires operations and finance leaders at waste and utility companies to be working from the same data. When safety is managed operationally but not financially tracked, the cost of poor safety performance accumulates invisibly until it surfaces as an unexpected insurance renewal, a regulatory intervention, or worse, a catastrophic incident during a collection run or utility service call.Ìý

91TV and utility operators that want to scale fleet capability efficiently cannot do that while carrying structural blind spots in their safety data. The two priorities are not in tension; they are the same problem.Ìý

Closing the Gap Before It Closes YouÌý

The data is clear. Older equipment is degrading safety performance. Safety performance is not being formally measured. Insurance markets are tightening. And a regulatory standard is arriving in 2027 that will redefine the baseline for what a safe, modern truck looks like.Ìý

Executives do not lack urgency; they lack visibility. The first step is straightforward: add Safety Score as a tracked KPI alongside Fuel Economy and Maintenance Cost per Mile. Until waste haulers and utility operators include this data in the same dashboard, the connection between aging collection vehicles and safety outcomes will remain a known risk that nobody is formally managing.Ìý

The waste haulers and utility operators that begin quantifying the safety cost of older equipment, and connecting it directly to insurance costs, CSA exposure, and lifecycle planning, will be the ones best positioned to navigate what is shaping up to be one of the most consequential periods of regulatory and financial pressure the waste and environmental services industry has faced in a decade.Ìý

Wesley Hall, CTP, is the Senior Director of Asset Performance and Off Lease at Fleet Advantage, a leading innovator in specialty financing, fleet data analytics, asset performance services, and life cycle cost management. For more information visit .ÌýÌý

Sources: Fleet Advantage 2025 Transportation Industry Benchmark Survey (January 2026, n=2,500+ fleet executives); NHTSA/FMCSA AEB Final Rule (2025); ATRI Operational Costs of Trucking 2025; FreightWaves; FleetOwner.Ìý