'It Still Runs' Is Not a Maintenance Strategy

'It Still Runs' Is Not a Maintenance Strategy

Three years ago, I inherited our company's equipment purchasing process. I didn't know much about outdoor power equipment beyond the fact that the STIHL logo seemed to show up on everything our crews asked for. What I did know was how to build a spreadsheet, and that's basically how this whole thing started.

So here's the opinion I've landed on after tracking every repair, replacement, and maintenance request for a full fiscal year: running commercial equipment until it fails is the single most expensive habit in facility management. Not the second most. The most. And I have the invoices to prove it.

I used to be a "if it still starts, it's fine" person. I'm not anymore.

What the Invoices Actually Said

I started keeping a detailed log in January 2024 (this was back when I was just trying to justify our tooling budget to finance). Every non-scheduled repair got a row: date, equipment ID, issue, cost, and how long the equipment sat idle.

The first twelve months looked like this:

• Average unplanned repair cost: $187 per incident
• Average downtime: 4.5 days (mostly waiting on parts)
• One catastrophic failure — a chainsaw that had never had its air filter checked — cost $312 to repair

That last one is not a made-up example. It's sitting in row 47 of my spreadsheet. The saw came in with a "weird noise." The piston was scored. The mechanic's note read something like "filter completely clogged, dust ingestion." A $14 part, checked every 25 hours or so, could have prevented a $312 repair and a week of downtime.

But here's what I didn't fully appreciate until I saw it in the numbers: the repair cost is not the expensive part.

The Cascading Cost Nobody Budgets For

When a chainsaw goes down, you don't just pay for the repair. You pay for the grounds crew who can't take down the dead oak behind the parking lot. You pay for the landscaping contractor standing around waiting for equipment that isn't coming. You pay in the emails your operations manager sends asking, "So when is the saw going to be fixed?" (The answer is never as soon as anyone wants.)

I can't put a precise dollar figure on the frustration of a project manager who had to reschedule a site clearance because our primary saw was in the shop. But I can tell you it cost me a lot of credibility, and I'd rather not relive that conversation.

What I learned, eventually, is that the reaction to a breakdown is always more expensive than the prevention would have been. Every time. Even the "cheap" repairs carry a hidden cost in scheduling chaos and lost trust.

The Counterintuitive Part

Everything I'd read about equipment management said to run machines on a fixed replacement schedule—five years, seven years, whatever the depreciation spreadsheet said. In practice, our older, well-maintained units were outperforming the newer budget models we'd bought to "save money."

That old MS250 STIHL chainsaw? Still starts on the third pull, every time (which, honestly, is pretty good for a saw that predates my time here). The cordless hedge trimmer we bought two seasons ago? Already showing battery degradation. Interesting how that works.

I've never fully understood why some machines seem to age better than others. My best guess is that it comes down to how they were broken in, plus the quality of their components. But the pattern is clear enough: maintenance consistency matters more than manufacture date.

The other thing I didn't expect: once I started tracking maintenance, I started noticing small things I'd previously ignored. A slightly rough idle. A chain that needed more tension than usual. A cordless hedge trimmer that seemed to run a bit hot. These are the kind of signals that, caught early, cost almost nothing to address.

I skipped the pre-winter check on one of our trimmers last year—I knew I should have replaced the fuel line, but I thought "what are the odds it'll crack?" The odds were apparently pretty good. It let go in the middle of a job in April, and we had to buy a replacement trimmer from a local dealer at retail price. That was a $40 lesson disguised as a $400 problem.

On the tool side, the electric torque screwdriver I bought for our shop (on a whim, mostly) has turned out to be one of the most useful small tools we own. Tightening the bolts on our pressure washer housing is a ten-second job now instead of a fifteen-minute hassle with a manual screwdriver.

And lineman's pliers — which I had to look up when I first saw them on a tool list, because I genuinely didn't know what are lineman's pliers used for — are surprisingly handy for gripping and twisting wire during electrical checks on equipment. Apparently everyone who's ever done electrical work already knew that. I did not.

What About the Argument That Maintenance Is Overrated?

I've heard the counterargument: "New equipment is cheaper than maintaining old equipment." I get it. Depreciation schedules exist for a reason. There's also the school of thought that says you should just run things until they die and replace them.

But that logic assumes you can replace equipment immediately when it fails. In my experience, you can't. Equipment arrives when it arrives. Dealers are backed up. Parts take time. And in the meantime, your team is either idle or making do with suboptimal tools.

Plus, there's a standards angle worth considering. According to FTC advertising guidelines (ftc.gov), product performance claims have to be substantiated. That means when a manufacturer publishes a maintenance schedule, it's not arbitrary—there's engineering data behind it. Ignoring it isn't "saving money." It's betting against documented failure modes.

And another thing: well-maintained equipment holds resale value. Nobody wants to buy a used chainsaw that hasn't seen a filter change in two years. That's a real cost, even if it doesn't show up on a repair invoice.

Bottom Line

I'm not saying every piece of equipment needs a 27-point inspection every week. That's overkill, and honestly nobody on my team has time for it.

What I am saying is this: five minutes of checking beats five days of waiting for parts. A $14 air filter. A $6 fuel line. A bolt tightened with an electric torque screwdriver. These are the small, boring tasks that keep commercial equipment running—and keep your team from standing around waiting for a fix.

The spreadsheet I kept for a year showed me that unplanned repairs cost, on average, roughly four times what scheduled maintenance would have cost. Not because the repairs themselves are always huge, but because of everything that happens around them.

So I budget for maintenance now. I build it into our equipment schedule. I ask our crew to flag small issues before they become big ones. And I stopped treating "it still runs" as a valid measure of anything.

It runs. Until it doesn't. And when it doesn't, it's always at the worst possible time.