March 17, 2014
Editor's Analysis & Top Industry News


Sutton_Janice Education + Networking = Success

Fleet pro­fes­sion­als have a wealth of edu­ca­tional and net­work­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to con­sider over the next six months. Here are just a few must-attend events.

NAFA 2014 Insti­tute & Expo — April 8–11, 2014
There is still time to reg­is­ter for the largest event of the fleet man­age­ment indus­try. Fleet pro­fes­sion­als attend year after year because of I&E’s real money sav­ing and time-saving value.

NAFA Inter­na­tional Fleet Acad­emy -July 14–16, 2014
For the global fleet man­ager; the focus is on crit­i­cal issues impact­ing global fleets and ideas on how to cre­ate a har­mo­nized global fleet.

AFLA 2014 Annual Con­fer­ence — Sep­tem­ber 7–10, 2014
This is a key edu­ca­tional and net­work­ing event for fleet man­agers, fleet man­age­ment com­pa­nies, OEMs and top vendors.

State Fleet Manager’s Work­shopOcto­ber 7–9, 2014
A 3– day inten­sive work­shop packed with infor­ma­tive pre­sen­ta­tions, panel dis­cus­sions and net­work­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties. Reg­is­tra­tion is free

Jan­ice Sutton


leaseplan_logo_2_ncds_big_4_15_2009-5_45_pm.bmp LeasePlan Expands Sales Team

Lease­Plan USA announces a new addi­tion to the sales team, Michelle Eads. Michelle will serve as Vice Pres­i­dent Sales, National Accounts for the Pacific North­west region.

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alternative fuel vehicles Free AFV Fleet Leasing Webinar

Not sure about pur­chas­ing alter­na­tive fuel vehi­cles on your own? Par­tic­i­pate in a free one-hour “Alter­na­tive Fuel Vehi­cle Fleet Leas­ing” webi­nar on Wednes­day, March 26 at 11:00 a.m. PDT / 2:00 p.m. EDT.

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dunkerley-luann

VIDEO: $4 Million in Savings in the Fleet Truck Sector

CEI has saved its fleet truck clients $4 mil­lion in the past year by ensur­ing proper labor and parts costs, and by nego­ti­at­ing on behalf of clients.

VIDEO: AFLA in May
elliott-bill
  AFLA’s First-Ever Midyear Forum
 

AFLA is excited to be host­ing its first-ever midyear forum in Philadel­phia on May 1st, so mark your calendars.


Click here to watch video
VIDEO: What GPS Can Do
finecey-paula
  1000% ROI from a GPS Solution
 

Some GPS Insight cus­tomers have seen as much as a 1000% ROI by tak­ing advan­tage of the solu­tions offered — includ­ing reports, alerts and imple­men­ta­tion of dri­ver policies.


Click here to read more



The Fleet Spot


Villella_Chris CEI’s Chris Villella to Speak on Subrogation Recovery at NAFA Chapter

The auto­mo­tive fleet indus­try could be recov­er­ing mil­lions of dol­lars more a year from third-party dri­vers respon­si­ble for high­way acci­dents with their vehi­cles. That’s the mes­sage CEI’s Chris Vil­lella will con­vey to mem­bers of the St. Louis Gate­way chap­ter of the NAFA Fleet Man­age­ment Asso­ci­a­tion this week.

Mr. Vil­lella, a 25-year vet­eran of the fleet loss recov­ery busi­ness, will give a pre­sen­ta­tion titled “Get­ting More from Your Sub­ro­ga­tion Pro­gram.” Top­ics will include the steps nec­es­sary for suc­cess­ful loss recov­ery and a review of the lat­est loss recov­ery technology.

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John Cordova AmeriFleet Names John Cordova West Coast Director of Sales of Sales

John Cor­dova has joined Amer­i­Fleet as Direc­tor of Sales for the West Coast, work­ing out of AmeriFleet’s Den­ver Office. Cor­dova comes to Amer­i­Fleet after a lengthy stint as a Ter­ri­tory Sales Man­ager for a lead­ing mov­ing and stor­age provider, has worked with fleets in the past, and has over 13 years’ expe­ri­ence in the trans­porta­tion and stor­age industries.

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Ryan Showers Ryan Showers Joins AmeriFleet as East Coast Director of Sales

Amer­i­Fleet has named Ryan Show­ers Direc­tor of Sales for the East Coast, work­ing out of AmeriFleet’s Alpharetta, GA head­quar­ters. A 15-year indus­try vet­eran who came to Amer­i­Fleet after a 5-year stop as the top sales­per­son for an industry-leading con­sumer prod­uct, Show­ers has spe­cial­ized in help­ing com­pa­nies pen­e­trate new mar­kets, while strength­en­ing their brands. His career includes an 8-year stint with Enter­prise, where he worked in many capac­i­ties on his way up that company’s well known devel­op­ment ladder.

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Fleet Remarketing  

Q&A with Bob Gra­ham, Vice Pres­i­dent of Vehi­cle Remar­ket­ing, ARI

We have had an excep­tion­ally buoy­ant used car mar­ket over the last four to five years. What do you see ahead?

We have had a great mar­ket for the last four or five years, arguably the best mar­ket in our his­tory. You almost couldn’t make a mis­take sell­ing a used vehi­cle. Unfor­tu­nately, that ride is com­ing to an end because there is an increased sup­ply of used vehi­cles com­ing back into the mar­ket­place which is putting a down­ward pres­sure on price. Luck­ily, we have good retail demand which is keep­ing that down­ward pres­sure fairly mod­er­ate, so prices are good but stable.

In gen­eral, I would say we are back to the nor­mal, sea­sonal mar­ket – in other words, a good mar­ket in the fall and again in the spring with tax sea­son. Fac­tors that had an effect on the mar­ket years ago – things we were used to and had come to expect – didn’t really have an effect dur­ing the past four or five years, but those things will begin to come into play again.

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Big Problems for GM  

Last month GM announced what seemed a rou­tine recall of 1.62M cars that were linked to 12 deaths and 31 crashes in which airbags didn’t inflate prop­erly. But today GM is fac­ing their biggest cri­sis in many years, com­plete with a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion, upcom­ing Con­gres­sional hear­ings, scrutiny from fed­eral reg­u­la­tors, and a host of loom­ing lawsuits.

On top of all that, there’s been a storm of neg­a­tive pub­lic­ity over the pos­si­bil­ity that the cars weren’t recalled in a timely man­ner — includ­ing news reports with tear­ful sto­ries about peo­ple killed in the now-recalled cars. GM has apol­o­gized for the way the recall was han­dled, and even hired out­side law firms to inves­ti­gate the company’s response to the igni­tion prob­lems. Mean­while, GM com­pany stock tum­bled nearly 10% last week.

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Fleet Trends & Issues


amerifleet-app-androidNew Amerifleet App Puts Power Of Mobility In The Hands Of Drive Away Customers Everywhere

Amer­i­Fleet recently launched a first-of-its-kind smart­phone App that will put the power of mobil­ity — and a host of impres­sive fea­tures — in the hands of cus­tomers look­ing for new ways to do more with less.

The App — which took 3 months from con­cept to launch and was devel­oped by AmeriFleet’s in house tech­nol­ogy group — is avail­able on both Android phones and iPhones. Amer­i­Fleet is also plan­ning a Black­berry ver­sion, as it has a large — and grow­ing — slate of cus­tomers in Canada that still pre­fer that plat­form.
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backup cameraStudy: Backup Cameras Reduce Blind Zone by 90%

A new study adds strong sup­port to a pro­posed rule that would require backup cam­eras on new cars and trucks. It shows the cam­eras are far more effec­tive at spot­ting chil­dren and other obsta­cles than less sophis­ti­cated park­ing sen­sors – or dri­vers using their mirrors.

Backup cam­eras are already found on many of the lat­est cars, trucks and crossovers, but the National High­way Traf­fic Safety Admin­is­tra­tion (NHTSA) has repeat­edly delayed announc­ing for­mal rules that would make them manda­tory – some­thing Con­gress and Pres­i­dent Bush autho­rized in 2007. That’s despite NHTSA’s own esti­mate that the devices could save as many as 200 lives a year – includ­ing a large num­ber of chil­dren under the age of five – inad­ver­tently run over when motorists back up.

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CRASH TEST DUMMYFord’s High-Tech Crash Test Dummies Help Meet Worldwide Safety Standards

Ford recently com­pleted its 20,000th crash test since 1954 at its facil­ity in Dear­born and the automaker has more than 500 safety engi­neers around the world who have con­ducted more than 31,000 tests at 1,800 sites around the world.

Ford has more than 100 dum­mies, a fam­ily rang­ing from an 18-month-old tod­dler for child seat test­ing to a large male. Dum­mies range in price from $50,000 to as much as $700,000 each when fully instru­mented with up to 100 devices installed from head to foot stream­ing 300 chan­nels of data doc­u­ment­ing the impact and its effects.

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telematicsNew Asset Tracking Telematics Solution Increases Efficiency and Productivity

GE Mon­i­tor Asset Track­ing, the new telem­at­ics solu­tion from GE Cap­i­tal Fleet Ser­vices, pro­vides a sim­ple, quick and reli­able way for fleet man­agers to iden­tify the exact loca­tion of the tools nec­es­sary for suc­cess­fully oper­at­ing their busi­ness by track­ing, in real-time, pow­ered and non-powered assets such as trail­ers, fork­lifts, key equip­ment and generators.

By installing GPS-equipped, battery-operated hard­ware onto fixed and mobile assets, fleet man­agers can view and man­age equip­ment activ­ity via mul­ti­ple color-coded dig­i­tal maps.

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Green Award Winner  

Remy, Leggett & Platt, GM all tie up with plug-in, after­mar­ket hybrid startup

Echo Auto­mo­tive, Inc. capped a flurry of announce­ments of part­ner­ships for its EchoDrive — the company’s bolt-on, plug-in hybrid kit — by win­ning the 2014 Green Award at the recently con­cluded Work Truck Show. Last year, Echo won the pres­ti­gious Editor’s Choice Award for new prod­uct inno­va­tion at the 2013 event.

Echo claims that its hybrid sys­tem, which fits between the engine and drive train, can save as much as 50% in fuel con­sump­tion. Some impres­sive names have lined up behind the fledg­ling Scotts­dale, AZ startup.

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Fleet Technology  

Do you won­der where the fleet indus­try is going over the next few years in rela­tion to tech­nol­ogy? In a recent sur­vey, more than half of fleet man­age­ment pro­fes­sion­als asked believe that fleets of var­ied indus­tries will adopt GPS fleet track­ing tech­nol­ogy to man­age daily oper­a­tions within the next three years.

Once you have expe­ri­ence how it makes fleet man­age­ment more effi­cient in just about every aspect, you will under­stand why imple­ment­ing a fleet man­age­ment solu­tion is so valu­able. So what is hold­ing you back?  Click for details on how to move forward.

 
The Company Car  

There are mul­ti­ple advan­tages for busi­nesses that choose to invest in com­pany cars. They pro­vide oppor­tu­ni­ties for adver­tis­ing your brand and moti­vat­ing employ­ees, and gov­ern­ment tax laws offer some sig­nif­i­cant mon­e­tary benefits.

The reduc­tion in price means that your com­pany can cre­ate a fleet which makes you appear afflu­ent and finan­cially sta­ble, and the options pro­vided by fleet man­age­ment ser­vices guar­an­tee that cars remain functional.

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Fleet Management Resources 
AmeriFleet
Offering a nationwide vehicle delivery and relocation service; serving the corporate and commercial fleet industry.
LeasePlan
LeasePlan is the world's leading high-touch service provider for vehicle leasing and fleet management.
The CEI Group Inc.
North America's largest accident management and fleet driver safety company.
ARI
Driven fleet professionals. Driving results.
NAFA
NAFA is the association for the diverse vehicle fleet management profession regardless of organizational type, geographic location, or fleet composition.

GPS Insight
GPS Insight offers GPS tracking solutions to meet your organization's unique requirements and challenges.
PHH
Customizing global fleet management to achieve your goals.