FleetManagementWeekly AmeriFleet
June 14, 2016

FOLLOW US

Editor's Analysis & Top Industry News


Beat Cons & Stress, Conquer Tomorrow

An $8,000 tow? That got our attention! On Accident Management’s latest column ‘Don’t Get Burned by a Towing Con’ could save you a few ill-spent bucks!

Anytime a company integrates another company into their business there is often a deep chasm of uncertainty over the outcome. I have lived this story.

So ever since Element Financial announced the purchase of GE Capital Fleet Services, we have been talking with members of Element’s leadership team about the integration’s progress. Mark Hayes, Element’s senior vice president of marketing, updates us on their approach and the current state of the integration of these two powerhouse fleet management companies in Q&A: Mark Hayes — ‘Confidently Conquering Tomorrow.’ A key to his confidence? Listening.

Feeling stressed out? Read Mike Cieri’s article in Talent Management for some clues on how to ease up.

Janice Sutton
Editor in Chief


Thought Leadership

Fleet Marketing – Guiding principles for fleet providers to improve marketing and increase sales.

Fleet Asset Management – Best practices for work truck management.

On Accident Management Learn ways to save money on your fleet’s collision repair costs.

Safety & Risk — Impactful driver safety and risk management tools and techniques.

The Fleet CX Toolbox – Solid steps to implementing and improving fleet customer experience.

The Sustainable Fleet – Strategic approaches to bring about a smarter, cleaner fleet.

BIG Data. BIG Results. BIG Future– We look at harnessing big data to achieve big results using cutting edge technology.

Talent Management – Smart guidelines to help you manage the talent in your workplace.

TCO Trends – Expert View — A global look at fleet total cost of ownership trends.


rasmussen-erik

VIDEO: Vehicle Delivery and Recalled Vehicles - A New Heightened Awareness

When it comes to vehicle delivery, PARS checks for open safety recalls on every car entered into their system – and they offer a variety of options for recalled vehicles.



VIDEO: The One Second Advantage
summer-driving
  Safety Tip: Driving in Extreme Heat
 

Are your vehicles properly prepared for summer driving? This one second safety tip from Driving Dynamics can help reduce the risk of breakdowns caused by extreme heat.


VIDEO: A Great Employee Benefit
fitzgerald-nancy
  Offering Off-Lease Fleet Vehicles to Employees is a Fantastic Benefit
 

Selling fleet vehicles that are just off-lease to employees is a fantastic benefit – offering great deals on great vehicles that have been strictly maintained.





The Fleet Spot


financial problem What Keeps Your Fleet Customers Up At Night?

By Chris Lyon, NTEA director of fleet relations

Have you ever had a problem at work follow you home after a long day?

Running a fleet can be a daunting task, with an inconceivable number of issues able to halt an entire operation. One concern that could be keeping your customers awake at night is money. Maintaining a positive cash flow is fundamental for any business. However, for fleet managers, a positive operating budget is a key metric for success.

READ MORE

tom-webb May’s Manheim’s Used Vehicle Value Index

Cox Automotive Chief Economist Tom Webb has published Manheim’s Used Vehicle Value Index results for May. Full commentary can be accessed here, but below are a few highlights:

• Wholesale used vehicle prices increased in May for the second consecutive month. That brought the Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index to a reading of 124.5 for May, a 0.6% gain YOY – the first since December of last year.

• Consecutive increases in April and May will be temporary, but do suggest that dealers have continued to achieve efficiency gains that are allowing them to bid up auction prices even as gross margins narrow.

READ MORE

ALD automotive ALD partners with Autocorp in Argentina

ALD International’s CCO Kent Bjertrup announced a new partnership for the global fleet company: Autocorp, one of Argentina’s leading providers of rental and leasing services.

“We are eager to provide a complete solution to our customers in South America, and while we already have a presence in Brazil, Chile and Peru, Argentina still was a ‘misssing link’ in our regional offering”, says Stéphane Renie, Sales & Marketing Director at ALD International. “We decided that it would be most efficient to search for a partner with local knowledge and local roots, and Autocorp was a logical choice”.
Dane Bremer Dane Bremer of Liberty Mutual Named New Chairperson of NETS

The Network of Employers for Traffic Safety (NETS) is pleased to announce the election of Dane Bremer, Director – Corporate Safety & Global Business Continuity for Liberty Mutual, as NETS Board Chairperson for 2016 and 2017.

“Dane brings energy and experience to NETS and understands the important role employers can play in making our roads safer. I know he will lead NETS efforts to make road safety an employer priority—one that focuses on all employees, their families and the communities where the employees live and work,” said Jack Hanley, Executive Director of NETS.

READ MORE

On Accident Management

By John Wolford, CEI director of client and provider services

How much should you pay for a tow? $100? $200? How about $8,000?

That’s how much one Canadian driver was asked to pay last year to get his car back from a body shop where a freelance tow truck took him after a rear-end collision in suburban Toronto. It’s part of a racket between repair shops and hungry tow truck operators to take advantage of unsuspecting drivers, and it’s happening all across North America.

How does it happen? Rogue tow truck operators listen to accident reports over police scanners and rush to the scene often even before the police and without police knowledge. They then offer to tow the vehicle to a shop they vouch for – the one who pays them a “finder’s fee” of a couple of hundred dollars.

READ MORE

 
The Element Integration

The integration of Element Fleet and GE Capital Fleet Services has been a closely-watched endeavor in our industry. We interviewed Mark Hayes, Senior Vice President, Marketing at Element Fleet to find out how they have collaborated with their clients to make the integration of these two power house companies successful .

Mark says, “In early 2016 we embarked upon The Listening Tour and invited all of our clients to come and visit with us at half-day sessions in 16 different cities across North America. We hosted an exchange of information covering topics related to integration, our technology platform, and our mobile app development. And most importantly, we asked our clients questions and listened to their answers – What do you think? Does this make sense? Will this work? What would you do differently? How can we make your job easier?

And the great part about that collaboration is that our customers told us what we were doing well and they told us some things that we could improve upon, and we did”

READ MORE

 
Talent Management

By Mike Cieri, MSIR, Vice President of Mardac Consultants

People react to external stimuli internally. Stress is an emotional and/or physical reaction to environmental activities and events.

Some stress helps improve performance by challenging and motivating us (eustress). Many people perform best under some pressure. When deadlines are approaching, their adrenaline flows and they rise to the occasion with top-level performance. In order to meet deadlines, managers often have to apply pressure to themselves and their employees.

However, if a high level of stress continues for prolonged periods, dystress, or bad stress, results often harmful to the individual and to the organization.

READ MORE








Fleet Trends & Issues


Ford Telematics Maintenance Connect Enables Ford Commercial Customers to Connect Their Vehicles to Any Ford Service Center

Last week at the Ford Fleet Preview event in Dearborn, Telogis and Ford introduced Ford Telematics Maintenance Connect, an industry-first capability telematics software solution that enables Ford commercial customers to share key diagnostic and maintenance information with a Ford service center of their choice. Maintenance Connect delivers an easy, proactive and efficient path to improved vehicle maintenance, providing access to certified Ford service technicians and parts, and helping to reduce costs associated with unanticipated service needs and vehicle downtime.

Maintenance Connect will be available this summer for all existing and new Ford Telematics customers. It provides actionable vehicle diagnostics and preventive maintenance schedules for more efficient and less costly vehicle repairs with maximized vehicle uptime. Through the Ford Telematics solution, Maintenance Connect is able to deliver the severity of Diagnostic Trouble Codes (DTCs) and Ford’s recommended course of corrective action.

READ MORE

Auto Industry Unites to Take Countermeasures against Hackers

Car and Driver

Automakers have gotten more serious about protecting motorists from car-related cyber threats, and not a moment too soon.

Amid growing concern from Congress and the traveling public, a dozen major manufacturers established an Information Sharing and Analysis Center (Auto-ISAC), which became fully operational in January. Already, the organization’s leaders say they’ve thwarted attacks by sharing threat intelligence and information on vulnerabilities.

READ MORE

Ten Ways To Kill Your Team’s Motivation Without Even Trying

Forbes

There is a huge industry devoted to a made-up topic called “Employee Motivation.”

The idea of hiring a consultant to motivate your employees is ludicrous. There are no team building exercises, backwoods adventures or contrived HR outings that will motivate a team if the team members don’t trust you and other another.

Trust is the topic we don’t talk about enough at work. We pretend that trust doesn’t matter, but it’s actually the only thing that matters in your business.

READ MORE

This Company Just Solved One of the Thorniest Problems for Driverless Cars

The Washington Post

One of the biggest mysteries we’ll need to solve for driverless cars is how to assign liability in an accident.

Some experts think car manufacturers will start taking on more responsibility, but many insurance companies are still loath to touch the subject because of the various state laws that risk complicating the picture.

But at least one insurer seems to sense an opportunity where others fear to tread.

READ MORE

Safety and Insurance

The Detroit Bureau

After hearing good things about the latest in crash-prevention technologies, you decided to add automatic emergency braking to your new car.

The feature costs north of $2,000 on most vehicles. Yet even though data show it can prevent crashes, the discount from your insurer is likely to be zero.

Most insurers aren’t yet ready to give a break to car owners who invest in automatic braking or other new electronic technologies such as lane departure warning or blind spot detection.

Many companies are still compiling their own data to confirm the devices stop crashes, while others say automakers don’t always make it clear which models have the new technologies.

READ MORE

 
Privacy and Security

The Guardian

US states are scrambling to regulate self-driving cars, but the focus on physical safety ignores the more complex issues of data privacy and security

States across the US are scrambling to figure out how to regulate self-driving cars, wearable technologies that track our health, smart homes that constantly monitor their infrastructure and the rest of the devices emerging from the so-called “internet of things” (IoT). The result is a smattering of incomplete and inconsistent law that could depress the upside of the technology without really addressing its risks.

What’s most notable about these early regulatory attempts is not that they are varied – that is to be expected. It’s that the regulations deal mostly with physical safety, leaving privacy and cybersecurity issues almost wholly unexamined. This seems to be a pattern now, true too of drone regulation, where regulatory bodies have jurisdiction over physical threats, not informational ones.

READ MORE

 
Flying Cars

Bloomberg

Three years ago, Silicon Valley developed a fleeting infatuation with a startup called Zee.Aero. The company had set up shop right next to Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., which was curious, because Google tightly controls most of the land in the area.

Then a reporter spotted patent filings showing Zee.Aero was working on a small, all-electric plane that could take off and land vertically—a flying car.

In the handful of news articles that ensued, all the startup would say was that it wasn’t affiliated with Google or any other technology company. Then it stopped answering media inquiries altogether.

READ MORE








Fleet Management Resources
 
AFLA – Automotive Fleet & Leasing Association
Providing the advanced forum for corporate fleet professionals to network with industry leaders.
The CEI Group Inc.
CEI is North America’s largest provider of fully integrated fleet accident management, driver safety and risk management services.
NAFA Fleet Management Association
NAFA is the association for the diverse vehicle fleet management profession regardless of organizational type, geographic location, or fleet composition.
AmeriFleet
Offering a nationwide vehicle delivery and relocation service; serving the corporate and commercial fleet industry.
Donlen
Since 1965, Donlen has been the fleet management industry’s leading provider of comprehensive, integrated financing and asset management solutions — and that spirit of innovation continues today.
PARS
PARS' mission is to provide you with high-quality service at competitive prices for all of your transportation needs.
ARI
Driven fleet professionals. Driving results.
Driving Dynamics
Driving Dynamics was established to help corporate fleet drivers develop expert, safe driving skills using proven, advanced driving techniques.
Wheels, Inc.
First in fleet for 76 years. Wheels helps you build tomorrow’s fleet today.



Index to FleetManagementWeekly.com 
Fleet Management Weekly Newsletter Archive
Access to back issues of the FMW newsletter.
Fleet Telematics
How telematics is rapidly changing the fleet management landscape.
Subscribe
Fleet Videos
Video clips of industry leaders speaking on a variety of engaging hot topics in fleet.
Fleet Safety
News and practices to help you bring your drivers home safely, every day.
Contact Us
Fleet Trends & Issues
A wide scope of topical news for today’s fleet professionals.
Fleet Sustainability
Focusing on the challenges and solutions inherent to building and managing today’s sustainable fleets.
Media Kit