Vehicle Equivalent Unit (VEU)
A weighting that expresses assets in terms of the maintenance effort they demand, so a fire apparatus and a sedan are not counted as one vehicle each.
Counting assets is easy and tells you almost nothing about workload. A fire apparatus, a refuse packer and a pool sedan are one unit each on an inventory and nothing like one unit each in the shop. A vehicle equivalent unit assigns each class a weight reflecting the work it actually generates, so a fleet can be described in terms of effort rather than headcount.
It exists mainly to make staffing arguments survivable. A raw ratio of assets to technicians invites a comparison with an agency running a lighter fleet, and that comparison usually concludes that the heavier fleet is overstaffed. Weighted units make the difference visible in a way a spreadsheet can carry into a budget conversation.
The weights themselves vary between fleets and consultants, and there is no single authority that settles them. That is worth saying plainly rather than implying a standard exists: what matters is that the scheme is written down, applied consistently, and explained to whoever is reading the result. A weighting nobody can see is indistinguishable from a fudge factor, which is exactly how it gets treated in a hearing.