The delay time concept has been used in a wide variety of applications for modelling important aspects regarded to the maintenance of systems. In some situations, the time in the defective state may interfere with the performance of the component or system, by reducing its efficiency, or may interfere with the cost of repairing components, for their subsequent reuse. As a consequence, on both occasions, the longer the time in the defective state, the worse the influence promoted by this period. Despite these facts, a small number of contributions deal with the influence of the time in the defective state and its respective cost. In addition, a limited number of works links delay modelling with the reuse of items. We thus present insights into the delay time model for second-hand items proposed by Santos et al. (2020). In general, the mentioned model may be applied to any component that wears along the time and may be replaced by a new or refurbished one. In the present work, the main contribution is the new discussions on the reuse of items in the context of single-component systems, from which new directions for further studies are established.