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Abstract Improved rig efficiency in the last decade has led to record U.S. crude oil production with fewer rigs operating. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) observes operators "increasing crude oil production while continuing to control costs." Over this same period, operating costs incurred per rig by contractors have continued to rise in addition to capital asset utilization of top drives, engines, pumps and others. This work presents the evolution of top drive usage across a rig fleet over a five-year span, explores how the results could be used to improve maintenance practices, and discusses the implications with respect to the wider industry trend of increasing rig efficiency. Drilling data from roughly 250 operating top drives in a fleet of super-spec rigs from 2019-2024 was analyzed to estimate workload in terms of the following metrics: energy expended, footage drilled, total string rotations performed, time above 80% max spec torque, and torque variability. The data was analyzed both fleetwide and by region using a linear regression to determine an approximate usage per operational time year by year. The change in these metrics with respect to time was analyzed to identify evolving usage trends over the last 5 years. The data collected indicates all observed metrics increased 2019-2024 in the fleet studied. Specifically, top drive energy expended per operational day increased 29%, average footage rotated per day increased 31%, and average string rotations per day increased 11%. These results support the prevailing industry narrative of greater output per rig, but importantly this dataset shows that the physical energy inputs and capital asset usages have also increased. This implies the increased ‘efficiency’ observed industry-wide cannot wholly be attributed to technology creating more output with the same physical input. Although the data presented only pertains to top drives, rig operations requiring higher top drive usage require higher usage of all other components, meaning commensurate increases in other capital asset utilization (e.g. pumps, engines) and consumable usage. Aside from these observations, the dataset also provides baselines for top drive workload metrics that could be used as a basis for usage-based maintenance scheduling. This work presents a novel top drive usage dataset and a discussion on the industry-wide discourse of increasing rig efficiency. In addition, the dataset and statistics presented serve as a reference point for future studies into top drive health to optimize equipment lifespan and performance through more effective maintenance practices.