Lease­Plan USA is team­ing with Amer­i­can Traf­fic Solu­tions (ATS) Fleet Ser­vices to imple­ment new toll and vio­la­tion solu­tions for its clients. TollPlanSM and Vio­la­tion­s­PlanSM are inno­v­a­tive pro­grams that will cap­ture and mon­i­tor data to assist clients in man­ag­ing the most com­mon traf­fic challenges.

With the intro­duc­tion of TollPlan, an elec­tronic toll pay­ment solu­tion, Lease­Plan clients can save up to 50 per­cent on toll man­age­ment admin­is­tra­tion costs. TollPlan con­sol­i­dates mul­ti­ple toll accounts into one pro­gram, pro­vid­ing cen­tral­ized con­trols, report­ing and pay­ment pro­cess­ing. Addi­tion­ally, with TollPlan, there is vis­i­bil­ity into tolling activ­ity with a robust report­ing pack­age. The pro­gram also allows dri­vers to expe­ri­ence increased mobil­ity with the use of high-speed cash­less toll lanes and reduces and can even elim­i­nate a fleet’s risk of toll violations.

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As we began think­ing about this arti­cle to cel­e­brate Wheels’ Dia­mond Anniver­sary, we asked two much-lauded, retired Wheels exec­u­tives, Den­nis LaL­ib­erty and Ted Less, both of whom joined the com­pany in 1958, to give us their unique per­spec­tives on the company’s culture.

Less, whose ini­tial mis­sion at the com­pany was to cre­ate a truck engi­neer­ing depart­ment, retired in 1995 as Senior Vice Pres­i­dent. He said, “Wheels was founded on two pil­lars: ser­vice and ethics.” He con­tin­ued, “Going to work was fun; every­one was treated like fam­ily.” Call­ing founder Zol­lie Frank a “tremen­dous vision­ary,” Less’s respect and admi­ra­tion for the three-generation Frank fam­ily lead­er­ship is prodigious.

LaL­ib­erty, a trainee when he was hired, retired in 2002 as Vice Pres­i­dent of Inter­na­tional Mar­ket­ing. He said, “It was a plea­sure to work at the com­pany and I learned a lot in my years there, not only about the indus­try but how to treat clients, how to deal with and develop employ­ees, and how con­sis­tent atten­tion to client ser­vice and com­mu­ni­ca­tion cre­ate an envi­ron­ment for respect and success.”

LaL­ib­erty con­tin­ued: “After a brief pause to cel­e­brate the occa­sion, I sus­pect that Wheels man­age­ment and employ­ees would echo the old Al Jol­son line, “You ain’t seen noth­ing yet!”

So, how did it all start? And what does Dan Frank say about the company’s future focus?

Start­ing April 1st, cus­tomers who sign up for the Shell Fleet Nav­i­ga­tor Card will receive 20 per­cent off ser­vices at par­tic­i­pat­ing Jiffy Lube ser­vice cen­ters. The Shell Fleet Nav­i­ga­tor Card helps fleet man­agers and their dri­vers reduce costs and achieve busi­ness goals.

“We know fleet man­agers are con­tin­u­ally look­ing for ways to save, which is why we intro­duced the highly cus­tomiz­able and flex­i­ble Shell Fleet Nav­i­ga­tor  Card,” said Henry Miller, gen­eral man­ager of the Com­mer­cial Fleet Card Pro­gram for Shell in North Amer­ica. “Now, with the card’s Jiffy Lube ben­e­fit, fleet man­agers can not only cus­tomize their fuel net­work and set con­trols down to the dri­ver level to real­ize sav­ings, but can also save on impor­tant ongo­ing fleet main­te­nance services.”

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Start­ing next month, many car buy­ers will be get­ting a novel fea­ture: Inter­net con­nec­tions with speeds sim­i­lar to those on the fastest smartphones—and even a few early dashboard-based apps, engi­neered to be as dumbed-down as possible.

Back­seat pas­sen­gers could get stream­ing movies and fast Wi-Fi con­nec­tions to smart watches and tablets in (and near) the car. For dri­vers, high-resolution nav­i­ga­tion maps would load quickly, and high-fidelity audio could stream from Inter­net radio ser­vices. But the first dash­board apps will be lim­ited, spare ver­sions of famil­iar ones like the Weather Chan­nel, Pan­dora, and Price­line. READ MORE

ARI® proudly announces two recip­i­ents of their “Ring­man of Dis­tinc­tion” award, which rec­og­nizes the out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions of ring­men at var­i­ous vehi­cle auc­tions. The recip­i­ents are Art Mecias of Adesa Los Ange­les Auto Auc­tion and Zach Massey of ABC Birm­ing­ham Auto Auction.

ARI part­ners with sev­eral auc­tion out­lets through­out North Amer­ica to max­i­mize poten­tial sales oppor­tu­ni­ties for clients’ vehi­cles. While auc­tion­eers con­trol the sale of a vehi­cle, ring­men sup­port them by spot­ting and iden­ti­fy­ing bids, sig­nal­ing them to the auc­tion­eer and help­ing to put sales together.

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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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Tran­si­tion­ing all or part of a fleet to alter­na­tive fuel vehi­cles can be an excit­ing new ven­ture. Alter­na­tive fuel engines, such as propane and com­pressed nat­ural gas (CNG), are def­i­nitely stak­ing their claim in the mar­ket­place as their key advan­tages are being realized.

While fleets enjoy fuel sav­ings and a boost in their image from their envi­ron­men­tal efforts, there are other fac­tors to think about. From ini­tial costs to fuel­ing sta­tions, main­te­nance and safety mea­sures, chang­ing a fleet over to alter­na­tive fuel can be a major shift for any fleet – and one that the fleet man­ager, as well as the main­te­nance man­ager and crew, should fully understand.

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Fed­eral author­i­ties’ nascent inves­ti­ga­tion into Gen­eral Motors is look­ing in part into whether the automaker com­mit­ted bank­ruptcy fraud by not dis­clos­ing defects that could lead to expen­sive future lia­bil­i­ties, a per­son briefed on the inquiry said on Friday.

The ques­tion is whether G.M. knew about the defect — a faulty igni­tion switch — when it filed for bank­ruptcy in 2009, and failed to fully dis­close the prob­lem, while real­iz­ing that it could lead to a cas­cade of lia­bil­ity claims.

While it has been known that the Jus­tice Depart­ment was inves­ti­gat­ing G.M., the inter­est in the bank­ruptcy fil­ing is the first indi­ca­tion of what direc­tion the inquiry may take.  READ MORE

Volk­swa­gen of Amer­ica plans to bring its newest clean diesel engine to North Amer­ica later this year, a move that could add even more momen­tum to the revival of the high-mileage technology.

VW has been one of the biggest pro­po­nents of the new diesel tech­nol­ogy begin­ning to show up in a grow­ing array of auto­mo­tive appli­ca­tions – with mak­ers as diverse as Chevro­let, Jeep, Mazda and Mercedes-Benz adding new “oil-burners” to their line-up.

VW’s lat­est diesel, known inter­nally as the EA288 engine, was unveiled this week dur­ing a con­fer­ence in Detroit. READ MORE