When you should trade your heavy-duty truck for a medium-duty truck?

Key takeaways:

While many fleets are well aware of their equipment needs, new entrants or those new to running their own business might benefit from carefully considering asset utilization.
Any shift in equipment classes should be backed by data; otherwise, the fleet is at risk of breakdowns, failures, and higher long-term costs.
Economics will always play a role in business decisions; however, external economics matter even less if the equipment can't handle the job.

In a rapidly shifting trucking market such as what the industry has experienced for the past few years, fleet owners understand that operations change and evolve. That means equipment should evolve with it.

FleetOwner recently dove into the reasons and benefits of switching from a heavy-duty truck to a medium-duty truck, and this article highlights when to switch, the data necessary to make that decision, and how economics play a role.

When to make the shift from a heavy-duty vehicle to a medium-duty vehicle

How do you decide when it’s time to replace a heavy-duty truck with a medium-duty truck or when a medium-duty truck could supplement your heavy-duty fleet? The answer will be different for every operation.

To help get there, a fleet must ensure that every vehicle “has a defined, justifiable role, whether that means removing underutilized assets, shifting classes, or optimizing routes,” Kyle Hammontree, business segment manager at Geotab, said.

“Fleets understand their operations pretty well,” Paul Rosa, SVP of procurement and fleet planning at Penske, said, “and they know what they need.” For this reason, it isn’t common for an established fleet to switch truck classes, he said.

Hammontree echoed this sentiment: “What we’ve seen more often are fleets downsizing—removing underused vehicles, consolidating routes, and getting leaner. Those moves are often the first step in realizing there’s room to rethink not just how many vehicles you need, but what kind.”

In many cases, when a fleet does decide to change from operating a heavy-duty truck to a medium-duty truck, it’s typically for a portion of their fleet, such as within a certain territory or for moving certain products.

However, new entrants into the industry or those new to running their own business might not immediately understand whether they would benefit from more, less, or different equipment. In these cases, Rosa said a fleet owner might benefit from speaking with an expert.

“As an industry expert, [the Penske team] can provide some of this additional input and observations,” Rosa said. It’s the fleet owners that are “young in their tenure and ... their business is thriving and growing where you get into some of this maneuvering and this change.”

It’s also these new-entrant fleets that likely have the most flexibility, as they’re building from the ground up, Hammontree said.

This stage of growth is “an opportunity to look at the full picture—route types, load profiles, maintenance models—and select vehicle classes that support agility, cost efficiency, and growth,” Hammontree explained.

Rosa recalled having one Penske customer who chose to move from a tractor and 53-ft. trailer operation to medium-duty trucks and smaller trailers.

“We brought a customer down from operating with 53-ft. trailers down to 28[-ft. trailers],” Rosa said. “They weren't filling the trailer all the time. So it's like, ‘OK, if you were to go with a tractor and a 28-ft. pup, as we call it, you're going to have greater maneuverability, greater flexibility, be able to go into the spaces that you wouldn't be able to get into with a 53-ft. trailer.' And that was a decision that we helped them make.”

The need for data

Data is another helpful tool for fleet owners to understand when and if to shift to different equipment. Fleet data will help owners better understand their overall utilization and help them make the right decision because no benefit will be realized if shifting equipment is the wrong move.

Geotab asset utilization report — Telematics data can help fleets understand if their operations would benefit from a change in equipment. Telematics provider Geotab provides analytics tools to help fleets analyze utilization down to location, drivers, or even the time of day, such as in the example here.

“That’s where data comes in,” Hammontree said. “It tells you how vehicles are being used, what’s underperforming, where there’s slack, and where there’s opportunity. Without that insight, the shift is a guess. With it, it can be a competitive advantage.

“If a fleet is considering that kind of shift—from heavy- to medium-duty—it should be backed by the right data,” he continued. “Because unless you know for certain that a medium-duty vehicle can perform the work reliably—and deliver savings in cost, time, or emissions—it’s a risk.”

Hammontree notes that this risk may manifest as breakdowns, delivery failures, and higher long-term costs, and this is why rightsizing starts with data.

In contrast to new-entrant fleets starting from the ground up, established fleets should rely on their fleet data even more, Hammontree suggested.

“Established fleets have legacy assets and operational patterns to navigate,” he explained. “For them, the opportunity lies in using data to identify inefficiencies—vehicles that are over-spec’d for their tasks, routes that could be better served with a different class, or underutilized trucks that could be removed altogether.”

Overall, telematics data can help fleets understand utilization thresholds, operational patterns, cost and emissions profiles for each vehicle, and—as with some telematics providers such as Geotab—provide analytics tools to help fleets analyze utilization down to location, drivers, or even the time of day, according to Hammontree.

Economic uncertainties play a role

The decision to rightsize a fleet or change equipment is, on the surface, an operational decision; however, it is also an economic one. Business decisions can make or break a business in times of uncertainty, such as we have experienced in 2025.

But what the trucking industry has going for it is that it’s no stranger to uncertain and hard times. In fact, the trucking industry has been in a freight recession since 2022.

“We've been in a freight recession that's caused a lot of fleets to ask, ‘What the heck am I going to do?’” Rosa said. “Many customers are delaying replacements or adding equipment, and in some cases asking, ‘Can I reduce my fleet?’ ... The longer they wait, the harder it becomes. We're at that inflection point where fleets have to make a decision.”

To ensure the right decision is made for the success of the fleet, Hammontree said both operational factors and economic factors should be considered.

“Economics will always be part of the conversation—fuel, maintenance, total cost of ownership—but those numbers only matter if the vehicles can meet operational needs,” he said. “A vehicle that’s cheaper to run but can’t handle the work isn’t saving you anything.”

Penske has these difficult conversations with fleet owners on a regular basis, and in the current political and economic environment with start-and-stop tariffs, rising inflation, and high interest rates, his advice is to reassess operations and, perhaps, even wait for the dust to settle.

“There's certainly a lot going on,” Rosa said. “Once that settles and people see the clear pathway of what they need ... there's going to be an inflection point. And I think our industry is going to see a big takeoff.”

While Rosa’s words are hopeful of more stability to come, Hammontree believes that even in times of stability, rightsizing is a never-ending process.

“It’s an ongoing discipline,” Hammontree said. “Whether it’s adding a few medium-duty vehicles, removing underutilized trucks, or rethinking how work is distributed across the fleet, the goal is always the same: Optimize for performance, efficiency, and sustainability.”

Fleets considering rightsizing by medium-duty addition, subtraction, or supplementation should immediately begin analyzing their data and assessing their operations and customers’ needs to ensure the right economic and operational decision is made when that dust finally settles.