For this assignment I looked at the active fleet complement for the City of Seattle. The data was most recently updated on March 30 and is refreshed monthly, so it appears to be a pretty active data set. It also includes all types of machinery, including transportation like boats, motorcycles and bicycles, and equipment like pumps and lawnmowers.
The data includes the date that each machine or vehicle was introduced into the fleet. Sorting for that category shows that the oldest vehicles are two custom made barges from 1946, and two slightly newer tugboats from 1948. All four vehicles belong to Seattle City Light. Most vehicles are rather new, 102 being 2017 models and 1560 being less than 5 years old.
The city includes the cost that it has taken to keep each machine or vehicle in service since it has entered the fleet. At the low end, there are a number of things at $0 that are not usually repaired, like vehicle hitches and bicycle tires. At the high end there are three steel hull boats that have costed $20 million in maintenance each. This goes to show that if you were to base a larger story on this data you may need to do more research because this is likely an estimate (even if other values include information out to the cent). Of the 25 costliest to maintain vehicles all but two belong to the fire department, and most are firefighting barges or speciality rescue vehicles.
The city included an estimated date of retirement for the piece of equipment. There could be some interesting implications in reporting because many of these vehicles are well past the date that they supposedly needed replacing. A number of cars are being a few years past their predicted retirement It may be worth considering if they are on the road because they lasted longer than anticipated or because they do not have the funds. There are some pumps, trailers and boats being used in public works that a two decades or more past that date. On the other end there are also quite a few barges and boats that will not be replaced for another generation, 2065 being the furthest out.
Moving onto pivot tables, the most immediate question this tool helps me answer is how many total vehicles there are and where they belong. Overall, the city has 4205 pieces in this fleet. City Light comes in first with 1065, followed by the Police Department with 784 and the Public Utilities with 687. The municipal court has the smallest fleet, with only one cargo van. The data is imperfect in figuring out how many of each type of vehicle each department has because the classification appears to be subjective.
Next I looked at the make of the vehicles in the fleet. The city chooses to go American-made for a majority of the vehicles. Ford has 1775 vehicles in their fleet, with a steep drop off to Chevrolet with 305. Toyota, Peterbilt and John Deere round out the top five. 428 of those Fords belong to the police department, 73 of which are Crown Victorias and 222 Police Interceptors.
The fire department has the costliest fleet to maintain, having spent over $150 million to keep all of their vehicles operational. On average their fleet is also the costliest, with each vehicle having cost over $622,000 to date. It is a huge jump from the next costliest, City Light, at $93,000 on average. However, the fire department has some of the most specialized rescue equipment while many of the other departments only have simple cars or boats.
While there does seem to be some potential for stories in this data, in all it appears to be a pretty mundane look at how Seattle spends and maintains its own equipment.