The City of Ocala bought 15 ABB R-Mag breakers in November 2023 at $40,197.50 each, four more in November 2025 at $44,499.75 each, and it had no second quote either time because WESCO is ABB’s sole distributor for public power in peninsular Florida. That is the recommended spares list working as designed: the equipment is bid, the parts that keep it running are not. On the public awards we can read, the spares line is 0.8% of a transformer award, 2% of a genset, and 20% of a breaker buy, and the vendor’s margin on it is whatever the channel allows. This piece prices spares and service against the equipment they belong to from public records, shows where the bid spread collapses to 0.2% and where it opens to 40%, benchmarks genset PM at dollars per unit per year, walks one PLC family’s published end-of-service dates, and ends with the four clauses that move spares pricing back onto the award.
The Open Factory Public Bid-Tab Price Book holds every public spares, breaker and PM award used below with a URL on each row; the master file is data/spares-prices.csv, 46 rows.
Source: Open Factory Public Bid-Tab Price Book (compiled from City of Ocala, City of Mesa council attachments; Hymson maintenance benchmarks; MachineToolIndex; as of Aug 2026)
Ocala’s PTI Transformers proposal carried $63,340 of required spares on an $8,070,340 award (0.78%, two autotransformers, May 2023) and its Virginia Transformer bid tab carried $48,900 on $5,726,568 (0.85%, three units, December 2023); the city’s Cummins 400 kW genset came with a five-year warranty line of $4,872.28 on $234,567.90 (2.08%, November 2023); Mesa bought five 72.5 kV SF6 breakers for $192,655 and kept one as a spare (20% by count and by dollars, May 2016); and one integral spindle rebuild at the low end of the Hymson $8,000 to $25,000 range is 11% of a $70,995 Haas VF-2 list. Five observations, three buyers, not a distribution; the point is the range, not the median.
Where the Margin Sits at the OEM
The consensus is that service is the high-margin business and hardware is the commodity. Rockwell’s own segment table says the opposite for the parts that matter here. In fiscal 2025 the Software & Control segment, which sells the controllers and I/O that end up on every recommended spares list, earned a 29.7% operating margin on $2,383M of sales; Intelligent Devices (drives, components) earned 18.0% on $3,756M; Lifecycle Services, the segment that does the field work, earned 14.5% on $2,203M, down from 16.1% in 2024.
Source: Rockwell Automation Form 10-K for fiscal 2025, filed Nov 12, 2025
The spread is 29.7% against 14.5%, and Lifecycle Services still carried 53% of Rockwell’s $2,878M backlog at September 30, 2025. The labor is the loss leader; the card in the technician’s bag is the product. A spare 1756 processor sold to a plant that cannot run without it is booked in the 29.7% segment, which is why the spares list arrives after the PO and at list. The OEM Disclosure Scorecard tracks which OEMs publish list prices at all; for controllers, none of the majors do, and the public awards below are the closest thing to a price sheet.
The channel prices the same way. Cummins’ Sourcewell contract 092222-CMM publishes a 400 kW diesel at $78,349.43 and a 1,000 kW at $232,619.61, then discounts “Maintenance Agreements” and technician labor by 5% against 10% on startup. The equipment carries the cooperative discount; the maintenance agreement keeps the dealer’s price, which is why the Genset TCO tool carries both.
Breakers: One Buyer, Two Years, Plus 10.7%
Medium-voltage breakers are the cleanest public series because utilities buy them in lots and post the quotes. Ocala’s R-Mag line moved from $40,197.50 in November 2023 to $40,981 in September and November 2024 (+1.9%) to $44,499.75 in November 2025 for the H5 variant, 10.5% above the H5 price of $40,282.50 two years earlier. Every quote carried a 22 to 27 week lead time and the 2025 quote added that prices may be adjusted for “duties, freight, tariffs, supplier pricing, surcharges, or exchange rate fluctuations.” A spare breaker is a lineup item with a switchgear lead time attached; the Lead-Time Monitor carries 15 kV metal-clad at 52 to 80 weeks, so 27 weeks for a loose breaker is the fast lane.
Source: Open Factory Public Bid-Tab Price Book (compiled from Riverside Public Utilities, City of Mesa and City of Ocala board and council attachments; as of Nov 2025)
Riverside Public Utilities paid $470,877.02 for 15 vacuum breakers in May 2021, $31,392 each, with four bids inside a 7.6% spread and installation by its own crews at $17,122.98; the same utility’s 24 69 kV breakers in 2019 came to $2,170,143, $90,423 each, and the board memo says the bid evaluation “took into consideration the proposal base amount, shipping and storage costs, optional item prices, and spare parts.” Riverside’s program exists because its older breakers “contain problematic or unavailable parts, and therefore, can no longer be cost-effectively maintained”; the memo puts service life at 30 to 40 years and the parts ran out first. Mesa paid for the alternative: two 20-year-old 69 kV breakers failed at Fraser Substation in April 2019, 16,800 customers lost 48 MW of distribution capacity, and the city ratified $292,224 of emergency purchases including $121,621 of replacement breakers, three years after it had bought a fifth SF6 breaker as a spare for $38,531.
For the low-voltage side, the OEM list is public. Schneider’s US product pages carry list prices, and the recommended spares for a distribution switchboard read straight off them.
| Reference | Description | List price, Sep 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| QO120 | QO 20 A 1-pole plug-in miniature breaker | $29.10 |
| HDL36100 | PowerPacT H 100 A 3-pole 600 V, lugs, thermal-magnetic | $1,328 |
| HGA36100 | PowerPacT H 100 A 3-pole 600 V, I-Line, thermal-magnetic | $1,772 |
| JGA36250 | PowerPacT J 250 A 3-pole 600 V, I-Line, thermal-magnetic | $5,252 |
| LGA36400U31X | PowerPacT L 400 A 3-pole 600 V, I-Line, MicroLogic 3.3 | $5,376 |
Source: Schneider Electric US product pages, list price shown per reference. CSV: data/10-schneider-list-prices.csv
The same 100 A H-frame is $1,328 with lugs and $1,772 as an I-Line plug-in, a 33% premium for the bus connection, and the 400 A L-frame with a MicroLogic 3.3 electronic trip is $5,376, $124 more than the 250 A thermal-magnetic J-frame. These are list prices, n=1 each, and a switchboard vendor’s spares quote will show them at list or a small discount; the Quote Check tool returns the list for the reference so the discount is a number. What list does not tell you is what the retrofit costs when the trip unit family goes obsolete: the National Institutes of Health awarded $3,358,750 in April 2026 to replace “existing, obsolete GE circuit breaker trip units” in Building 10 with ABB Entelliguard TU units, sole source.
PLC Cards: 0.2% Apart or 40% Apart
The bid spread on a spares list is the margin signal. Where only the OEM channel can supply the part, the two quotes land on top of each other; where distributors compete, they do not.
Source: Open Factory Public Bid-Tab Price Book (compiled from Riverside, Mesa and Phoenix board and council records; as of 2022)
Riverside’s 2021 purchase of automatic voltage regulator spares for its two 2011 gas turbines drew two responsive quotes, $109,497 and $109,716, 0.2% apart, with GE Packaged Power, GEXpro and a third vendor non-responsive; Mesa’s 2017 bid for Schneider Modicon PLC replacement and spares at its water plants drew $51,596.40 and $72,394, 40% apart, from two electrical distributors. Between them sit the breaker lots at 5.6% (n=4) and 7.6% (n=4), Mesa’s six SF6 bids at 24%, and Phoenix’s two bids for the identical annual genset service scope at $153,215 and $202,955, 32%. A spares list that draws quotes 0.2% apart is not being competed; it is being confirmed.
Source: Riverside Board of Public Utilities, AVR spare parts report and OEM Parts Network quotation, May 2021, via Legistar
The OEM Parts Network quote itemizes an IS200ACIEH1B exciter card at $34,750, a power supply at $16,975, two I/O boards at $14,997 and $11,425, and three more cards between $9,375 and $11,250, all “subject to prior sale or while supplies last” with two-week delivery; the city’s memo says the parts were bought so a November 2021 outage would not wait on them. That is a ten-year-old machine buying its controller spares from the secondary market at prices the OEM channel matched to the dollar. The federal record shows the endgame: the Corps of Engineers paid $31,346.75 in August 2025 for ControlLogix 5580 processors “to replace end of life Rockwell Automation ControlLogix PLC processors” at McAlpine Locks, the Navy paid Rockwell $329,840.16 sole source for ControlLogix EtherNet/IP modules in March 2025, and NASA paid $290,950 for 1756-L83E controllers in 2021. None of the three awards publishes a quantity, which is the Equipment Price Benchmark’s reason to exist; the ControlLogix lead-time cycle that put those buyers on allocation in 2022 and 2023 is in From 36 Weeks to Stock.
Obsolescence Has a Published Calendar
Every major PLC vendor publishes a lifecycle status per catalog number. Schneider’s US product pages print two dates on a discontinued reference, “Discontinued on” and “End-of-service on”, and the gap between them is the window in which the OEM will still repair or supply the part before the aftermarket is all that is left.
Source: Schneider Electric US product pages (se.com), published lifecycle status per reference
The Modicon Quantum 140CPU65150 processor was discontinued December 31, 2018 with end-of-service December 18, 2025 (substitute: an M580 BMEP582040); the Quantum Ethernet module 140NOE77101 shares the 2018 discontinuation but runs to December 31, 2027; the 32-point DC input 140DDI35300 and the power supply 140CPS11420 were discontinued December 31, 2022 and January 15, 2023 with end-of-service December 31, 2030; the Premium CPU TSXP572634M got the shortest window, December 2, 2020 to November 19, 2024. So a Quantum rack installed in 2005 lost its CPU from the catalog after 13 years and from OEM service after 20, while its I/O stays serviceable until 2030. Mesa’s 2017 memo describes exactly that rack: PLCs “15 plus years old” with “many failures in the past several months” that “cannot be reconfigured for future system enhancements and will be disposed of after cannibalizing any useable parts.”
The lesson is not that Schneider is slow to retire product; a seven-year service tail on a discontinued CPU is generous. The lesson is that the calendar is public and almost no purchase order references it. A spares clause that says “vendor shall give 12 months’ notice of discontinuation and offer a last-time buy at contract pricing” costs nothing to write in 2026 and is worth the difference between the $31,346.75 the Corps paid for planned replacements and whatever Mesa’s water plant paid in downtime while its filters could not backwash. The Lead-Time Schedule tool takes the end-of-service date and the current lead time for the substitute and returns the last quarter in which the migration can still be planned rather than forced.
PM Contracts at Dollars per Genset per Year
Preventive maintenance is the recurring version of the spares list, and cities publish it with unit counts. Riverside’s Fleet Division has maintained the same fleet of 45 stationary and portable generators through three contractors since 2018, which makes it the best public series we have.
Source: Open Factory Public Bid-Tab Price Book (compiled from Riverside, Phoenix and Mesa council records and USAspending; as of Sep 2024)
Collicutt Energy Services’ 2018 agreement priced the base PM at $106,904.49 a year for 45 generators, $2,376 each, plus up to $50,000 a year of on-call repairs; Bay City Electric Works’ October 2020 proposal, adopted through a Sourcewell Kohler contract, priced 44 units at $143,902.65 a year, $3,271 each; Duthie Electric’s 2024 agreement, chosen from eight proposals, priced the base at $140,764.24 for 45 units, $3,128 each, plus $55,000 on-call. Phoenix’s estimated $217,920 a year across the “more than 80 generators” its 2021 memo counts is under $2,724 per unit; the Maritime Administration’s $113,782.07 over two years for 11 campus generators (nine offers, 2019) is $5,172 per unit per year; and Mesa’s Facilities contract, which bundles interval and major repairs, rentals and refueling, runs $404,000 a year for about 54 generators, $7,481 each, with an escalator of up to 5% or CPI. Scope explains the 3x range: PM alone is $2,400 to $3,300 per genset per year on the Riverside series; add repairs and fuel and it is $7,500.
The markup is on the same page as the base price and nobody reads it. Collicutt’s worksheet lists “MATERIALS/PARTS MARKUP 35%”, fuel at 35% over cost, labor at $120 an hour and $180 on call; Bay City’s proposal lists labor at $169 to $278 and an automatic renewal “with a 2% increase per year to contract capping out at 10%.” The base PM is competed; the parts pass-through is a percentage nobody bids against. It is the same mechanism our 2,439 public change orders showed on construction contracts, and the same reason Grainger’s list prices could sit at multiples of transaction prices for a decade.
Source: City of Riverside, RFP 1763 services agreement Exhibit C (2018) and Bay City Electric Works proposal 130458 (2020), via Legistar
Collicutt’s $106,904 was $36,540 of quarterly inspections, $41,079 of annual PM and coolant service, $25,296 of load testing and $3,989 of oil and fuel sampling, with transfer switch inspection “included”; Bay City’s $143,903 was $69,258 of quarterly-plus-major service, $34,669 of load bank testing, $16,163 of ATS service, $16,253 of coolant service and $7,560 of fuel analysis. The 35% jump between them is mostly scope that moved from “included” to a line, which is the honest way to price it and the expensive way to buy it. Both contractors were dropped at the end of their base terms: the city’s 2021 memo says Collicutt’s services “have been, and continue to be, unsatisfactory” and its 2024 memo says Bay City’s were “unsatisfactory regarding responsiveness, quality of workmanship, and repair estimate”; those are the city’s judgments in its own council record, not measurements, and both firms bid again in 2024 and ranked fourth and seventh of eight. At utility scale one spare dwarfs all of this: Silicon Valley Power told its council in January 2025 that a 2022 overhaul and spare rotor exchange on one turbine generator cost “over $1.4 million in unanticipated costs”, and with gensets on allocation through 2028 per Cummins and Caterpillar Are Sold Out, the spare rotor gets bought.
Machining Centers: The Spindle Is the Spares List
For a VMC the recommended spares list is short and the big item is the spindle. Against the $70,995 Haas VF-2 list we priced in March, an integral spindle rebuild is $8,000 to $25,000 (11% to 35% of list), a ball screw regrind is $4,000 to $9,000 per axis, and a PM contract on a single machining center is $1,500 to $4,000 a year (2.1% to 5.6%). Hymson’s labor ladder is $95 to $140 an hour for an independent technician against $150 to $225 for the OEM distributor. Those are vendor benchmarks, not awards; the Public Bid-Tab Price Book has zero CNC awards with spares itemized, so the machining rows below lean on rebuild ranges. DMG Mori’s first-half 2026 results give the OEM’s view of the same number: JPY 73.7bn of MRO, spare and engineering orders against JPY 335.2bn total, 22% of the order book from machines already on the floor.
When to Buy Spares With the Machine and When to Wait
The rule that falls out of the awards is about channel, not equipment class. Buy with the machine whatever only the OEM channel can supply, because the price will not fall and the lead time will not shorten; defer whatever a distributor can bid, because the spread is 24% to 40% and the machine is already running.
Source: Open Factory Public Bid-Tab Price Book; Schneider Electric product pages; Hymson benchmarks; compiled Aug 2026. CSV: data/09-when-to-buy.csv
Three of the seven rows go on the award (trip units and relays, one spare breaker per frame at 15 kV and up, one PLC processor set) and three wait for a distributor bid (filters and coolant kits, spindles and ball screws on condition, standby-diesel controller boards); transformer bushings and relays go with the unit because the $12,370 optional HV bushing on Ocala’s proposal costs more than that once the factory closes the order.
What to do Monday: pull the recommended spares list out of the vendor’s post-award quote and put it into the RFQ as a priced schedule, with the Quote Check list price next to each Schneider or Eaton reference and the Bid-Tab Price Book unit price next to each breaker; ask for the lifecycle status of every catalog number on the list, in writing, before the PO; and split the list into the sole-channel items you buy at award and the competitive items you send to two distributors in year two. Our RFQ for capital equipment has the schedule format; our switchgear quote anatomy shows where the spares line hides among the other ten. The one clause that saves the most is spares at award pricing for five years, and Ocala’s own quotes show what it is worth: 10.7% on a breaker in 24 months, before tariffs, on a line the Tariff Exposure Calculator now flags for Section 232 adjustment. Behind the paywall: the four clauses, with model language a purchasing manager can paste, and the vendor replies to expect on each.