A fall in the age of fleet cars and vans may be plateauing, new analysis from 1link suggests.
Figures for March show the average ages of a company vehicle entering a workshop are now 2.96 years for cars and 3.33 years for vans.
Before the pandemic, in January 2020, the corresponding numbers were 2.40 years for cars and 3.14 years for vans. This increased significantly from around the onset of Covid in April 2020, peaking in late 2023 and early 2024 at 3.07 years for cars and 3.75 years for vans.
A general downward trend followed for most of 2024 but further reductions were limited during 2025, ending the year on 2.84 years for cars and 3.29 years for vans. The first quarter of 2026 has since seen slight rises.
“Following the pandemic, it revealed a rapid ageing of company cars and vans as businesses both opted to hold onto them for longer and found obtaining new vehicles much more difficult because of production issues.”
Tim Meadows, CCO at 1link, said: “This metric shows the average age of a vehicle entering a workshop for maintenance recorded on our industry standard 1link Service Network platform and is therefore a good indicator of the average age of the fleet parc.
“Following the pandemic, it revealed a rapid ageing of company cars and vans as businesses both opted to hold onto them for longer and found obtaining new vehicles much more difficult because of production issues.
“During 2024, this situation improved quite markedly but last year we saw little in the way of further reductions and in the first quarter of this year, even some indications that average ages may be slightly increasing.”
Overall, the data now seemed to be suggesting decreases in fleet ages have bottomed out and the current figures may represent something close to a new normal, he added.
“It has probably been a given that car and van ages were never going to return to pre-pandemic levels – factors ranging from better quality vehicles to higher acquisition costs have made longer replacement cycles attractive – and what we may now be seeing is the development of a consensus around post-pandemic fleet averages.”
1link Service Network is used by UK fleets to process almost 20,000 company car, van and truck service, maintenance and repair job sheets every day from fleets totalling 4.9 million vehicles working with over 8,500 suppliers.
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