Those 700s would never come close to a million miles with the type of driving we do. No truck is going to last that long in extreme driving conditions, stop and go , city driving, 6 days a week.
I beg to differ. The 12-valve Cummins is a million-mile motor. Some of our CTV tractors with larger Cummins are well over a million already. The Alllison transmission is one of the most bulletproof ever built. The aluminum and fiberglass/plastic body will never corrode or wear-out. Commercial vehicles are meant to last a long time, and getting 20 years out of a W700 would have been entirely possible. If I had a delivery business, I'd probably snap-up several of these, after I checked the frames.
UPS used to keep package cars forever. back in the late 80's they would still drag-out package cars from the early 60's and then store them until the next peak. They would just keep on rebuilding them until the frame broke or rusted-out and only then would they scrap them. Some of the better ones were painted white or yellow and re-purposed as ramp vehicles for airport ops. One of the reasons UPS runs such a tight ship is that they run everything into the ground before they get rid of it. Jeez, when I drove seasonal feeder for them it was the same deal. They'd roll-out these old warhorse tractors with way over a million miles on them and make the temps use them for peak. The rest of the year, they sat around or were used for very local work. Smart, and very frugal, even if it wasn't much fun for the driver.
The point is that a smart company gets the maximum utilization out of it's vehicle assets. It is far cheaper to maintain a W700 than it is to replace them with a new fleet. Sure, the Sprinter gets better mileage, but they are total crap. My guess is that a Nissan or an Econoline get similar mileage to a diesel W700.
So, where are the savings? Remember, we are supposed to be broke here.
