|  | |
Pictured: Tobias Kern, Thilo von Ulmenstein, Lukas Jania, Balz Eggenberger During the 5th International Fleet Meeting, held by fleetcompetence Group and aboutfleet in Geneva on March 7, 2018, the international consulting firm fleetcompetence Group announced that it has expanded its geographical footprint by attracting additional partners in North America, Asia, the Pacific region and Africa. This step is in line with the continued strong demand for support in international fleet projects. READ MORE
|
|
| | |
By Suzanne Benzion, Director, Strategic Consulting, Element Fleet Management
Throughout 2017, Element’s Strategic Consulting team uncovered some note-worthy trends for our customers, and provided actionable insights against these trends. The data told some pretty compelling stories around innovative ways to maximize productivity, improve driver safety and satisfaction and reduce overall fleet cost. Here’s an overview of the themes that surfaced in 2017, along with trends we’re monitoring in 2018. What happened in 2017? READ MORE
|
|
| | |
Forbes We all know that U.S. infrastructure is in need of serious repair, but the Highway Trust Fund is substantially underfunded with the current gas tax. To meet current spending levels the tax would need to be 31.6 cents per gallon, and to maintain existing conditions and performance, the tax would need to be 46.6 cents per gallon. The upward amount the tax could be without affecting supply or demand is $1.00. “Most of us do not even notice the gasoline tax as the federal and state (if any) taxes are already built into the advertised per gallon pricing. So a rise in gas prices because of a rise in the tax would be not salient to consumers. But, we all would notice the better roads, bridges, and airports should the tax rise.” Read the article at Forbes.
|
|
| | |
By Art Liggio, President and CEO, Driving Dynamics During the 2016 Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting, chairman and CEO Warren Buffett was asked about the declining financial performance of GEICO, an insurer owned by Berkshire Hathaway. Buffett responded, “Last year both frequency—how often people had accidents, and severity, which is the cost per accident—both of those went up quite suddenly and substantially.” What are the underlying causes for these increases? In last month’s Safety & Risk column, we took a look at influencing factors driving significant increases in crash cost severity, which included: READ MORE
|
|
|
| |
 By Kathy Massey, VP of Client Services, AmeriFleet
With the advent of technology that can capture and analyze a huge quantity and wide variety of data, fleet management has increasingly become an analytics-intensive endeavor. This has enabled fleet owners and operators to achieve unprecedented efficiencies across a number of key performance categories. Typically, these have included optimizing residual value, fuel and maintenance expense, logistics, driver and fleet safety, all of which has positive effects on the bottom line. But in AmeriFleet’s experience with fleets of all types — from light-duty to vocational and heavy-duty vehicles – we’ve found three areas of opportunity that are consistently under-recognized in terms of data capture, actionable information, benchmarking and decision tools: logistics spend, inventory management, and compliance. Key metrics, such as average miles/move, days in storage, unassigned inventory versus out of stock purchase and rental expense, return-to-service ratios, non-compliance expense, and in general, overall supply chain optimization all lend themselves to significant improvement when the same approach to “Big Data” is taken as other dimensions of fleet operations. Several examples will illustrate the potential benefits. READ MORE |
|
|
 By Mark Boada, Senior Editor I’ve got a question for government fleet administrators: do you really know how your fleet’s performance stacks up compared to your peers, particularly along such dimensions as total cost of ownership, productivity and safety? I’m asking that question on the heels of my column last week announcing that the National Council of State Fleet Administrators (NCSFA) has for the first time selected an outside agent – the widely respected fleet consulting firm, Mercury Associates – to conduct its 2017 benchmarking study. It turns out that heading the project at Mercury is Steve Saltzgiver, one of the country’s most highly regarded fleet professionals, with experience running fleets for one city, two counties and two Fortune 500 corporations. In addition, he’s a former director of NCSFA, and so directed several of the organization’s benchmarking studies, which go back at least to the 1990s. So, he seemed like a good choice to talk about the general state of government fleet benchmarking, and he clued me in to its curious status. READ MORE |
|
|
 The Detroit News In agreement with automakers, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has decided that vehicle greenhouse-gas emissions standards are too aggressive and need to be revised. The tailpipe rules enacted by President Barack Obama’s administration, were aimed at slashing carbon emissions from cars and light trucks by boosting fuel economy to a fleet average of more than 50 miles per gallon by 2025. “The EPA has completed a draft decision outlining their rationale and the move is widely expected to result in weaker targets that will be easier for automakers to achieve as sales skew toward SUVs, pickups and other light trucks.” Read the article at The Detroit News. |
|
| |
