How do you calculate the cost of equipment downtime?

Multiply lost production hours by margin per hour and by the percentage of capacity genuinely lost, then add fixed repair and mobilization cost. With 16 hours at $1,800/hr, 75% capacity lost and $5,000 fixed, total downtime cost is $26,600.

What is downtime cost per hour?

It is total downtime cost divided by lost hours. In the worked case, $26,600 over 16 hours works out to $1,662.50 per lost hour once the fixed repair cost is spread across the stoppage.

Why include a capacity-lost percentage?

Because a stopped machine does not always halt the whole operation. At 75%, three-quarters of the unit's margin is lost while buffers, alternate routes or partial workarounds recover the rest, giving $21,600 of variable loss rather than the full $28,800.

What is the difference between variable and fixed downtime cost?

Variable cost is the lost production margin ($21,600 here) that scales with stoppage length. Fixed cost is the one-off mobilization and repair adder ($5,000) you pay regardless of how long the machine is down.

How does downtime cost justify reliability spending?

If a single 16-hour failure costs $26,600, condition monitoring or a held spare that prevents even a couple of those events per year quickly pays for itself against the variable loss.

What is a high downtime cost per hour in mining?

On a bottleneck haul or load unit, lost margin can run thousands of dollars per hour. The $1,662.50/hr here is meaningful; on a primary loader feeding the whole pit it can be several times higher.

Mining Vehicle & Underground Equipment calculator

Downtime Cost Calculator

Downtime cost quantifies what an unplanned stoppage of a haul truck, shovel or LHD actually costs the operation — not just the repair bill, but the lost production margin while the machine sits idle. Maintenance managers and mine planners use it to rank failures, justify spares and condition-monitoring spend, and decide when an expensive standby or rapid mobilization pays for itself. The headline insight is that the variable production loss usually dwarfs the fixed repair cost, especially on a bottleneck unit. This calculator separates those two components so you can see where the money really goes when a machine goes down.

What this calculator does

Estimate the financial impact of mining vehicle downtime, combining forgone production margin with mobilization and repair charges.
A mine maintenance planner quantifying the cost of an unplanned haul-truck stoppage to justify a spares or standby strategy.
It computes total downtime cost as lost hours times margin per hour scaled by the share of capacity actually lost, plus a flat mobilization and repair cost.

Formula used

Downtime cost = lost hours x margin per hour x capacity-lost % + mobilization
Cost per lost hour = total cost / lost hours

Inputs explained

Equipment downtime duration:
Lost contribution margin per production hour:
Share of capacity genuinely lost:
Mobilization and repair flat cost:

How to use the result

Use it to value an unplanned stoppage when building a business case for reliability spend, spares, or standby equipment.
It assumes lost capacity converts cleanly to lost margin; if downstream buffers or spare units absorb the outage, the real loss can be lower than the headline.

Current U.S. benchmarks

U.S. light vehicles sell at a 16.9 million annual rate (BEA, Jun 2026), up 4.1% from a year earlier, the volume signal for automotive supply chains.
Steel mill PPI stands at 348.53 (BLS, May 2026), up 6.7% from a year earlier. New factory orders are up 2.3% year over year (Census).
The U.S. has 11,691 transportation equipment establishments employing about 1,682,910 workers (Census County Business Patterns, 2023).

Common questions

How do you calculate the cost of equipment downtime? Multiply lost production hours by margin per hour and by the percentage of capacity genuinely lost, then add fixed repair and mobilization cost. With 16 hours at $1,800/hr, 75% capacity lost and $5,000 fixed, total downtime cost is $26,600.
What is downtime cost per hour? It is total downtime cost divided by lost hours. In the worked case, $26,600 over 16 hours works out to $1,662.50 per lost hour once the fixed repair cost is spread across the stoppage.
Why include a capacity-lost percentage? Because a stopped machine does not always halt the whole operation. At 75%, three-quarters of the unit's margin is lost while buffers, alternate routes or partial workarounds recover the rest, giving $21,600 of variable loss rather than the full $28,800.
What is the difference between variable and fixed downtime cost? Variable cost is the lost production margin ($21,600 here) that scales with stoppage length. Fixed cost is the one-off mobilization and repair adder ($5,000) you pay regardless of how long the machine is down.
How does downtime cost justify reliability spending? If a single 16-hour failure costs $26,600, condition monitoring or a held spare that prevents even a couple of those events per year quickly pays for itself against the variable loss.

Last reviewed 2026-05-12.