PARS, Pro­fes­sional Auto­mo­tive Relo­ca­tion Ser­vices, Inc., is cel­e­brat­ing its 15^th year of busi­ness as a lead­ing provider of auto­mo­tive trans­porta­tion and logis­tics services.

In 1998, for­mer Buick Fleet Direc­tor Jim Chris­tiano first opened PARS for busi­ness, seek­ing to set a new stan­dard for excel­lence in drive-away moves. In its first year, PARS quoted 50 moves a day and received 10 orders.  Since then, the com­pany has grown dra­mat­i­cally, recently mov­ing into new 10,000 square-foot head­quar­ters in Gainesville, VA, and open­ing 14 offices.

Today, PARS pro­vides auto­mo­tive relo­ca­tion ser­vices through­out the con­tigu­ous 48 states, Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Canada.  Cus­tomers can access a fully inter­ac­tive web­site allow­ing them to obtain quotes, place orders, and access up-to-date order sta­tus infor­ma­tion. PARS moves thou­sands of vehi­cles each year while offer­ing its cus­tomers an increas­ingly com­pre­hen­sive list of value-added services.

Lori Ras­mussen, Pres­i­dent, now heads the busi­ness, rep­re­sent­ing the sec­ond gen­er­a­tion of the Chris­tiano fam­ily.  She joined PARS in 2004, suc­cess­fully lead­ing the busi­ness’ growth and over­see­ing its invest­ment in leading-edge technology.

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The more peo­ple you inspire, the more peo­ple will inspire you. That’s the cen­tral tenet behind Simon Sinek’s vision of a suc­cess­ful orga­ni­za­tion. Sinek, a best-selling author who teaches lead­ers and orga­ni­za­tions how to inspire peo­ple, has been described as a “vision­ary thinker with a rare intel­lect.” Hun­dreds of fleet man­agers from through­out North Amer­ica will get the oppor­tu­nity to take in his wis­dom dur­ing a Keynote Address at NAFA’s 2014 Insti­tute & Expo in Min­neapo­lis, MN on April 10.

“I imag­ine a world where peo­ple wake up every day inspired to go to work and return home at the end of the day feel­ing ful­filled by the work they do, feel­ing that they have con­tributed to some­thing greater than them­selves,” said Sinek.

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GE Cap­i­tal Fleet Ser­vices ana­lyzed cus­tomer fleet data result­ing in $1.2 bil­lion poten­tial sav­ings oppor­tu­ni­ties for cus­tomers since 2011. Just last year alone, GE Cap­i­tal Fleet Ser­vices iden­ti­fied $481 mil­lion in poten­tial cost sav­ings for cus­tomers with cus­tomers real­iz­ing $209 mil­lion in actual cost savings.

Fleet Man­agers are more actively engaged in cost-cutting prac­tices as indi­cated by the iden­ti­fied cost sav­ings. This iden­ti­fied oppor­tu­nity trans­lates to $401 per vehi­cle across the 1.4 mil­lion vehi­cles under GE’s fleet man­age­ment in 2013.

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Cre­at­ing Incen­tives is a sure way to get your team per­form­ing at their best every day on the job.  Some­times the hard­est part of start­ing an incen­tive pro­gram is fig­ur­ing out how to pull the cri­te­rion in a quick and sim­ple way that will not cre­ate even more work.

GPS Insight fleet track­ing soft­ware makes pulling data to com­pare your dri­vers a sim­ple process, so all you have to worry about is get­ting your team enthu­si­as­tic about a lit­tle healthy com­pe­ti­tion. READ MORE

A recent study from the Uni­ver­sity of Michigan’s Trans­porta­tion Research Insti­tute com­pared the num­ber of deaths by car acci­dents to other coun­tries around the word and U.S. dri­vers didn’t do as well.

World­wide, there is an aver­age of 18 auto fatal­i­ties per 100,000 peo­ple. The U.S. is actu­ally bet­ter than the aver­age at just 14 deaths, but com­pared to other indus­tri­al­ized nations, the number’s not all that impressive.

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The next gen­er­a­tion of route guid­ance maps is being rolled out by a com­pany called Here, a sub­sidiary of Nokia Corp. The maps help vehi­cles adjust for top fuel econ­omy based on ter­rain ahead. Dri­vers can save fuel and avoid accidents.

The maps pro­vide data about a road’s pre­cise slope to the vehicle’s onboard com­puter, which sets the cruise con­trol sys­tem and adjusts the throt­tle accord­ingly. The tech­nol­ogy is another step toward hands-free driving.

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Law­mak­ers fret that vehi­cles and dri­vers could be mon­i­tored, or dri­vers tar­geted with unwanted ads via in-car Internet

Almost 15 years ago, Scott McNealy, head of Sun Microsys­tems — and by the way, son of Amer­i­can Motors’ Vice Chair­man Bill McNealy before the com­pany was sold to Chrysler — cre­ated a media storm when he was quoted as say­ing, “You have zero pri­vacy any­way. Get over it.” He prob­a­bly didn’t have telem­at­ics in mind when he said it, because even in-vehicle nav­i­ga­tion was still in its infancy.

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In 2010, the world’s lead­ing eye­wear com­pany, Lux­ot­tica, chose Arval when it switched from company-owned fleets in each coun­try to a global, full-service leas­ing car pol­icy. The deci­sion quickly proved its merit by yield­ing ben­e­fits that included reduced fleet costs to greater man­age­ment con­trol in lit­tle more than a year after it was implemented.

Mobil­ity is a vital part of Luxottica’s busi­ness, both for its man­agers, as well as its sales and mar­ket­ing staff, who work with a vast net­work of retail out­lets. Lux­ot­tica is the world’s largest eye­wear man­u­fac­turer. Until 2010, Luxottica’s sub­sidiaries pur­chased their own fleet vehi­cles, with man­agers able to choose any brand up to a max­i­mum list price.

Then, Lux­ot­tica turned to inter­na­tional full-service leas­ing with Arval.

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A team of expert fleet man­agers will become train­ers for the day when they host a series of workshop-style ses­sions at this year’s Fleet Show at the world-famous Sil­ver­stone rac­ing cir­cuit in North­hamp­ton­shire, Eng­land on April 9.

In a rad­i­cal change from the sem­i­nar pro­gram of pre­vi­ous years, the orga­niz­ers have opted for a new for­mat in which expe­ri­enced fleet man­agers will pass on their knowl­edge and exper­tise in a series of inter­ac­tive ses­sions where audi­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion will be actively encouraged.

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