By Don Scare and Mike Quimby

Earlier this month, the Carolina Panthers and Denver Broncos went head to head in Super Bowl 50. NFL players train long and hard to keep their performance optimal. How do you ensure you have a winning fleet in place? When it comes to trucks, there are many things you can do to keep your fleet operating like a champ.

See the following playbook:

Preventative maintenance
Recognizing the importance of preventative maintenance is critical when operating a fleet. A preventative maintenance program is used to proactively avoid or reduce vehicle breakdowns. Taking pre-emptive measures can help prevent potential problems and limit vehicle downtime, lowering overall operating costs.

Preventative maintenance should be performed on a scheduled basis, including daily vehicle inspections. Remember, if a vehicle becomes unsafe due to lack of maintenance or repair, a fleet manager can be held liable.

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By Wendy Eichenbaum

Nothing in this world is free. And you are reminded of that fact every time you decide which features you’ll include in your service. Customers want more features at a lower price tag.

However, the more features you add, the more your service gets lost in the vortex of commoditization. This is a no-win game where you try to keep up with your competitors by including every feature they include. In the end, customers cannot differentiate between services that are loaded with the same unnecessary features.

Businesses with an eye to CX study their market to understand which features consumers really want and which are just added expenses, or even worse, a detriment to the service since they clog the experience.

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Wheels, Inc. has become the first fleet management company to offer a comprehensive reimbursement solution to its clients.

“Many of our clients have varying transportation and driver needs in their fleet – leasing may work best in some applications, while reimbursement may work better in others.

“Seasonal work, medical exceptions, new hires, startup initiatives, low mileage drivers, cultural issues or acquisition of a company with an existing reimbursement program are some of the reasons we’ve found clients may choose reimbursement for a segment of their employees,” said Dan Frank, president of Wheels.

“The Wheels Reimbursement Program allows clients to provide the optimal solution for each employee and is at the forefront of industry-leading innovation.”

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The Detroit Bureau

Gas prices may be dropping, but the rate of car theft is not, according to new statistics from the FBI, stolen car rates are up 1% through the first half of 2015.

While a small increase may not seem like much, car theft is the only property crime that rose during that period and it had been trending downward in recent years.

The silver lining is that the statistics only account for the first six months of last year so there is a reasonable chance that they could shift to the other side of the ledger.

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Huffington Post

The oil and gas industry may have thought it had killed the electric car, but sales — boosted by generous government subsidies — rose dramatically between 2010 and 2014, and energy giants are worried the thing may have come back to life. 

Time to kill it again.

A new group that’s being cobbled together with fossil fuel backing hopes to spend about $10 million dollars per year to boost petroleum-based transportation fuels and attack government subsidies for electric vehicles, according to refining industry sources familiar with the plan. A Koch Industries board member and a veteran Washington energy lobbyist are working quietly to fund and launch the new advocacy outfit.

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MarketWatch

­­ Taxpayers are left holding the bill for car damage and road repairs.

How to fund America’s crumbling infrastructure has been a recurring theme in the 2016 presidential election, but the most obvious (and irritating) sign of that is already costing taxpayers.

Pothole damage has cost U.S. drivers $15 billion in vehicle repairs over the last five years, or approximately $3 billion annually, a new study from the American Automobile Association concluded.

With two-thirds of Americans concerned about potholes on local roadways, according to the study, the organization cautions drivers to remain on high alert to potholes on their regular routes — often easier said than done — and urges state and local governments to fully fund and prioritize road maintenance.

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Forbes

Volvo just announced a move that should come as welcome news to those who habitually misplace their car keys.

That’s because it wants to be the first automaker to eschew physical keys and/or a remote key fob altogether, perhaps as early as 2017. In their place the company would offer new-vehicle owners access to their autos via a smartphone app and Bluetooth wireless technology; they’d also be able to open the trunk and start the car remotely as well.

Using an app to unlock one’s car is not exactly a new idea, but other automakers employ it as a secondary, and not primary avenue for access. For technophobes and others married to the status quo, Volvo says it will continue to offer a physical key fob to customers who request it.

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By Ed Dubens, CEO and Paul Sudell, Operations Director — Interactive Driving Systems

Risk assessments prior to vehicle allocation
Driver risk assessment, monitoring and improvement is important to organizations requiring their employees to drive for work purposes – for a range of business, legal, financial and even societal reasons.

Essentially, risk assessment for any work-related driving activity should follow the same principles as those for any other work activity. It should identify and document the potential hazards, who might be harmed and reasonable measures to support your drivers to protect themselves from harm.

Read more about driver risk assessment and predictive modelling

NBC News

Visa wants to turn your car into a mobile payments platform.

The company showed off a concept app at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona Monday that will let drivers pay for fuel and parking without leaving their car.

Visa teamed up with Honda to create the app which can be accessed via the car’s dashboard. It will tell a driver when their gas is low and navigate them to the nearest place to fill up. Once parked next to the pump, the app can calculate the cost of filling up and a person can pay for the gas and even convenience store items via their dashboard.

The proof of concept was also shown alongside another app which allows people to pay the exact price for their parking spot without under or overpaying. Visa teamed up with ParkWhiz for the product.

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Detroit Free Press

A future filled with self-driving and connected vehicles lays just around the bend — but it’s riddled with a minefield of legal, hacking and financial risks.

That was the verdict Thursday as lawyers, cybersecurity experts and software engineers gathered for the Connected Car Symposium in downtown Detroit, sponsored by the Butzel Long law firm.

Perhaps the most harrowing problem in this zoomy future of autonomous, software-packed vehicles may be protecting them from hackers. A fast-growing density of software guides these vehicles and collects data on everything from where we drive to what we eat.

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