Practice: Hold or sell — the economics

For: Sellers (fleet managers, org admins) · Cypress Managers acting for a delegating org

The decision

A vehicle's panel plots two lines against time: the projected value and what you end up with if you release that week. The practice question is which line to act on, and whether the black line's shape is telling you something real or simply declining because the fleet hasn't told Sequoia what the vehicle earns while it runs.

The principle

The blue line is the gross projected value — the class curve (car, SUV, truck, van) bent by the vehicle's own steepness against its class, read from real Cypress-wide sales of the same model (median steepness of at least 5 of that model, against at least 20 of its class; thinner than that and the model just rides the class curve, no correction applied). The black line is what actually lands in your account if you release that week: gross value, minus selling cost, minus the running cost accrued while held, plus whatever the vehicle earned while it ran.

That last term is the hinge. Planning → Costs sets what a class costs to run a week and what it earns while held — a licensed baseline stands beside each input, and a figure you set there applies to every vehicle of the class unless its own panel overrides it. Without an "earns while held" figure, the black line only declines — the chart says so in words, not just in shape — because sooner always looks better when nothing offsets the running cost. Only once a class has a contribution figure can the black line rise before it falls, with the shaded window marking where it peaks.

Worked example

Acme Fleet Services' 2022 Ford Transit 250 is a van running local delivery routes. Its panel plots Orbis's $31,400 valuation forward along the van curve; Acme hasn't set a weekly contribution figure for vans in Planning → Costs, so the black line reads decay-only — every week held simply costs the van's weekly running cost, read at the estimated tier from a class baseline (Acme hasn't set a van figure), with nothing earned back, and the "+1 mo / +3 mo / +6 mo" wait chips are all negative. Maria, Acme's Fleet Manager, could change that: routes generate real revenue, and setting a weekly contribution for vans would let the black line show what holding the Transit another few weeks is actually worth against releasing it now (Orbis $31,400; listed at $32,500, floor $29,000).

Signals to watch

• The running-cost tier and its source, read together. An estimated tier paired with a class baseline source means nobody has set a figure for this fleet — Planning is using the licensed default. A verified tier instead pairs with a real source — this vehicle's own figure, or your [class] figure set in Planning → Costs — worth checking before trusting a close call.
• A model with no steepness correction. The curve's source line says so plainly ("fewer than 5 [model] across Cypress") — the projection is riding the class curve unadjusted, wider than a model with real data behind it.
• The rough-to-clean band width. A wide shaded band means the vendor's own valuation range is wide for this vehicle — the point estimate is less trustworthy than the band suggests at a glance.

Common mistakes

• Reading the blue line as what you'll receive. It's the market reference before selling cost and before holding cost — the black line is the number to act on.
• Treating "sooner is always better" as a verdict on the vehicle rather than a statement about missing data. It means the fleet hasn't told Sequoia what holding earns, not that holding never pays.
• Comparing a decay-only vehicle's black line to a contribution-modeled one from a different class as if they're the same kind of number — one assumes nothing is earned while held, the other doesn't.

Related

• The plan in Sell — one voice
• The plan — goals, lots, and the quarter