Master seasonality curve¶
Single source of truth for seasonality
Water-truck demand is seasonal and recurring — the same customers come back each season. The curve below is the shared reference; the SWTR roadmap, the water-truck GTM, and any entity plan that mentions season should link here, not restate it.
Markers: 🟢 Confirmed · 🟡 Assumption · 🔴 Gap · 🎯 Target.
The curve¶
🟡 Peak: May–September. Demand for water-truck rental spikes across the Arizona dry/hot season — dust-control disturbance, fire/wildland activity, and construction cadence all concentrate here. This peak is consistent operator knowledge but is not yet validated against a wired rental-log data series (🔴 — validate once utilization is flowing).
| Phase | Roughly | What's happening | What it means operationally |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-season ramp | ~Feb–Apr | Demand building toward peak | 🎯 Front-load marketing and reservations here, not during peak — reach known/repeat renters before they need a truck |
| Peak | May–Sep | Highest rental demand; utilization pressure | Fleet on rent; a unit lost to maintenance is a contract at risk. Uptime (and stocked parts) matters most now |
| Off-season | ~Oct–Jan | Softer demand | Keep trucks moving at softer rates; use slow months for rebuild throughput |
Counter-seasonal sourcing — the group's structural edge¶
🟢 The group builds and rebuilds its own trucks (Superior Equipment) as well as renting them. That lets sourcing run counter-seasonal to demand: buy and rebuild salvage units in the off-season (Oct–Jan), when the fleet isn't fully deployed and shop capacity is free, so units are ready before the pre-season ramp. Rebuild throughput in the slow months is the supply-side answer to the demand peak — you cannot buy fleet in May.
Two counter-seasonal moves, one calendar
- Demand side — front-load marketing into the pre-season ramp (Feb–Apr), not into peak.
- Supply side — front-load rebuild throughput into the off-season (Oct–Jan), so fleet is ready for the ramp.
They point at the same conclusion: the off-season and shoulder months are when the peak is won, not during it.
Why utilization is the hidden number¶
The health metric across the season is fleet utilization — how much of the fleet is earning. 🟡 Industry reference target is ~75%; below ~50% signals a price/marketing problem, above ~90% signals room to raise rate. This KPI is defined once in the Metrics Glossary and tracked in the SWTR roadmap — it is not redefined here.
🔴 Gaps on the curve
- The exact month-by-month shape and amplitude of the curve are not yet quantified from actuals — the rental log isn't wired.
- Fleet capacity is unknown to this layer (the earlier site fleet listing was fabricated and removed). A seasonal utilization curve can't be computed without the denominator. Confirm the truck count before leaning on utilization planning.