This model enhances operational efficiency and investment strategies in short-term car rental fleets, integrating total cost of ownership considerations.
<ns3:p>Efficient fleet composition is a critical factor in the competitiveness of short-term car rental companies (Rent-a-Car, RAC), where decision-making must balance service demand, operational efficiency, and financial sustainability. Traditional fleet composition models often focus on homogeneous fleets and cost minimization but neglect the specific challenges of heterogeneous short-term rental fleets, including shorter replacement cycles, diverse financing strategies, and varying customer requirements. This paper introduces a decision-support model for fleet composition that explicitly integrates the concept of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), encompassing acquisition, depreciation, financing, insurance, maintenance, and residual value. The proposed framework enables the determination of optimal fleet size, structure, and replacement schedules while accounting for economic constraints and market conditions. By combining established multi-criteria methods with TCO-based evaluation, the model enhances decision quality, supports investment strategies, and ensures more accurate cost assessments. The study contributes to bridging a research gap by adapting TCO analysis to the realities of the RAC sector.</ns3:p>
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B. Filipek Mazur (2025) studied this question.
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