Ross Enterprises maintains a fleet of agricultural equipment for rental to local farmers. Ross maintains all its equipment in a company-owned facility. Data on maintenance costs and operating hours of the equipment have been collected for the past 24 months to help managers plan financial needs. Managers at Ross were initially excited about having the data and the analysis available for planning, but the initial regression results revealed the following equation:
Maintenance costs = $10,564 – $67.13 × Operating hours
The coefficient on operating hours was highly significant and the adjusted R2 was 0.89.

Required
How would you explain a negative coefficient; does it seem likely that the more the equipment is operated, the less the company spends on maintenance?