May 5, 2014
Editor's Analysis & Top Industry News


Sutton_Janice The Family of Fleet

Over the years, we have for­mally inter­viewed for Fleet Man­age­ment Weekly hun­dreds of our fel­low fleet pro­fes­sion­als. I can­not tell you how many peo­ple talk about the sense of fam­ily they feel in this indus­try. It’s a repet­i­tive theme as we chat with folks at the fleet indus­try con­fer­ences. And we love to hear when fleet man­age­ment com­pa­nies have been lauded for being great places to work. Maybe our indus­try is not unique, but it sure is a good feeling.

Thus, we were ter­ri­bly sad­dened to learn of the pass­ing of Jeff Cole­man, senior fleet man­ager for Time Warner Cable’s West region. Jeff was a mem­ber of NAFA and active in the Pacific South­west Chap­ter. Jeff will be remem­bered as a won­der­ful guy and will cer­tainly be missed by his col­leagues. We express our con­do­lences to his fam­ily and many friends.

Drive Safety,

Jan­ice Sut­ton
Exec­u­tive Director


Jeff Coleman In Memoriam: Jeffrey Coleman

Jef­fery L. Cole­man, 56, senior fleet man­ager for Time Warner Cable’s West Region, passed away on April 23 from acute res­pi­ra­tory fail­ure and result­ing complications.

Jeff began his career in fleet man­age­ment in school bus oper­a­tions at Laid­law Tran­sit in 1983, where he held posi­tions from school bus dri­ver to head dis­patcher to divi­sion man­ager. He joined fleet man­age­ment at Pinker­ton Secu­rity and Inves­ti­ga­tions in 1995 and later moved to the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia Los Ange­les (UCLA) as fleet oper­a­tions super­vi­sor. In 2001, Jeff joined AT&T Broad­band, which was acquired by Com­cast in 2002. In 2006, he inte­grated three fleets in the Greater Los Ange­les oper­a­tions of Com­cast, Adel­phia, and Time Warner Cable. At the time of his death, Jeff man­aged the West Region fleet of 13,000 vehi­cles for Time Warner Cable.

Jeff was active in NAFA and was the chair and vice-chair of the NAFA Pacific South­west Chap­ter. The chap­ter will honor Jeff with a moment of silence at the Chapter’s May 7th Meeting.


memolo-frank

VIDEO: Relocation Services - Passing the Test

Some­times vehi­cle relo­ca­tion is a very sim­ple propo­si­tion, but not always. Some­times fleet man­agers have com­pli­cated vehi­cle moves that require a bit of extra effort. Hear about how PARS passed the test for this for­mer fleet manager.

VIDEO: Membership Has Its Rewards
johnson-bob
  The Benefits of Joining NTEA
 

Asso­ciate Mem­bers of the NTEA enjoy a vari­ety of ben­e­fits, includ­ing unlim­ited tech­ni­cal sup­port from full-time engi­neers — who are there to ensure that vehi­cles are prop­erly designed & spec’d.


Click here to watch video
VIDEO: Fleet Safety
crawford-rich
  Using Better Information to Encourage Better Driving
 

A lot of smart fleet man­agers are suc­cess­fully mon­i­tor­ing dri­vers, cap­tur­ing infor­ma­tion that allows them to encour­age and incen­tivize bet­ter, safer dri­ver behavior.


Click here to read more



The Fleet Spot


Mark Fields Mark Fields Succeeds Alan Mulally as Ford CEO

July 1 will bring one of the biggest tran­si­tions Ford Motor Co. has expe­ri­enced in years – but don’t expect to see many changes, short of who gets the best park­ing spot in the under­ground garage at Glass House, the automaker’s sub­ur­ban Detroit head­quar­ters. In what was arguably the worst-kept indus­try secret in some time, Ford offi­cially con­firmed that the 68-year-old Alan Mulally well retire as CEO and hand the reins over to his hand-picked pro­tégé, Mark Fields at the mid-year mark.

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Shannon May Shannon May Named GE Capital Fleet Services VP of Sales, West Region

GE Cap­i­tal Fleet Ser­vices has named Shan­non May as vice pres­i­dent of sales — West region, based in Den­ver, Colo.

Build­ing on more than a decade of fleet man­age­ment indus­try expe­ri­ence, May sup­ports both exist­ing cus­tomers and new busi­ness devel­op­ment in her role with GE Cap­i­tal Fleet Ser­vices. Before join­ing GE Fleet, May held lead­er­ship roles in sales and account man­age­ment roles with ARI, Pit­ney Bowes and Enter­prise Fleet Management.

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Ken Vlasman Ken Vlasman Promoted to Director of Service at DUECO

DUECO, Inc. has announced the pro­mo­tion of Ken Vlas­man to the newly cre­ated role of Direc­tor of Ser­vice. In his new role, Ken is respon­si­ble for lead­ing DUECO’s ser­vice teams in six ser­vice cen­ters through­out the orga­ni­za­tion and direct­ing and expand­ing the DUECO train­ing solutions.

READ MORE

Fleet Relocation  

Terry Lang­ness is Vice Pres­i­dent, National Sales for PARS, where he is respon­si­ble for all sales activ­i­ties for the US, Canada & Puerto Rico. Terry has over 35 years fleet indus­try expe­ri­ence, and is also an AFLA Board Mem­ber (cur­rently serv­ing on the Con­fer­ence Com­mit­tee). We recently caught up with Terry at the Work Truck Show in Indi­anapo­lis, where we spoke with him about the var­i­ous ser­vices PARS has to offer beyond basic relo­ca­tion — and why their cus­tomers seem to like them so much.

READ MORE

 
Government Fleets  

The fleet pro­fes­sion requires a strong, deci­sive voice at the table when it comes to the rela­tion­ship between fleet and leg­is­la­tion. NAFA has always been that voice for its mem­ber­ship and beyond, but at the Annual Busi­ness Meet­ing at NAFA’s Insti­tute & Expo in April, the Asso­ci­a­tion announced steps to take it even farther.

Con­ven­ing at the Min­neapo­lis Con­ven­tion Cen­ter in Min­neapo­lis, MN, NAFA Pres­i­dent Claude T. Mas­ters, CAFM, announced the for­ma­tion of NAFA’s Gov­ern­ment Affairs Com­mit­tee, a unit that will become the pre­em­i­nent voice for fleet to the halls of leg­isla­tive influence.

“NAFA rec­og­nizes the respon­si­bil­ity the Asso­ci­a­tion has for being the fleet rep­re­sen­ta­tive to law­mak­ers,” said NAFA Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer Phillip E. Russo, CAE. “We have been instru­men­tal in stat­ing with, clar­ity and pres­ence, what fleet’s posi­tion is in terms of leg­is­la­tion. With this announce­ment, we are truly stak­ing our claim.”

READ MORE and find out who is on the committee

 
 



Fleet Trends & Issues


Ford-Transit-with-Nixon-and-Hinrichs-300x226Ford’s Newly Updated Transit Work Van Provides More Options

Intro­duced in the U.S. nearly six years ago, the Tran­sit Con­nect has been a hit with small busi­nesses – cater­ers, florists, even dog groomers – who need to run errands but don’t nec­es­sar­ily have a lot of equip­ment or mer­chan­dise to carry around.

The Tran­sit replaces the aging E-Series van which has gone years with vir­tu­ally no sig­nif­i­cant updates. For the launch of Tran­sit, how­ever, Ford has pumped about $1.1 bil­lion into the Kansas City plant, where it will add 2,000 new jobs.

READ MORE

NCSFA new logo 2011Upcoming Webinar and Networking Opportunties From NCSFA!

Webi­nar: Idling Reduc­tion for Fleets
May 14, 2014 2:00 — 3:00 CST

Join experts from Argonne National Lab­o­ra­tory as they dis­cuss how unnec­ces­sary vehi­cle idling dam­ages not only air qual­ity but a fleet’s pub­lic image and bot­tom line.  In this webi­nar, learn about the effects of idling and the approaches — from tech­nol­ogy to human fac­tors - to reduc­ing it.  Included is an intro­duc­tion to Idle­Box, a ready-to-use elec­tronic toolkit that helps fleet man­agers imple­ment their own idling reduc­tion initiatives.

Reg­is­ter Now!

gps-tracking-software-all-fleet-sizesUtilize GPS Tracking For Any Size Fleet

It is impor­tant to inves­ti­gate poten­tial GPS fleet track­ing solu­tions to make sure that they meet the require­ments of your fleet size. Whether your fleet is at the enter­prise level, or if you have just a few vehi­cles, it’s impor­tant to get a solu­tion that is adapt­able to your fleet’s require­ments. With an advanced solu­tion like GPS Insight, you can access the infor­ma­tion and func­tion­al­ity that will best fit the needs of your fleet.

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dieselGM Mid-Size Pickup Trucks Will Have Diesel Engine Option

Until this year, diesel engines were the ele­ment of only the heavy-duty pick­ups offered by GM, Ford and Fiat Chrysler Auto­mo­biles N.V.

Gen­eral Motors Co. said it plans to offer a diesel engine option in its forth­com­ing medium-size pickup trucks, the Chevro­let Col­orado and GMC Canyon.

GM sees an oppor­tu­nity to reach new cus­tomers with a diesel offer­ing in the medium-size trucks. The new trucks, which will go on sale later this year, will be 1,100 pounds lighter than the cur­rent Ford Motor Co. F-150 pickup — the top-selling pickup.

READ MORE

Teen Driver Safety  

To help par­ents coach teens in devel­op­ing the skills to be safe dri­vers, the Net­work of Employ­ers for Traf­fic Safety (NETS) and Lib­erty Mutual Insur­ance have joined forces to release an elec­tronic edi­tion of The Novice Driver’s Road Map: An 8-Step Guide for Par­ents (eNDRM). The new guide is avail­able now as a free down­load from the NETS website.

READ MORE and Down­load the Guide

 
Fleet Telematics Solutions  

From Small to Large Oper­a­tors: A Look Across 20,000 Ser­vice Fleets

In this Fleet­Beat Report from Fleet­mat­ics, fleet oper­a­tors can see key bench­marks directly rel­e­vant or related to their spe­cific busi­ness type, in areas such as fleet uti­liza­tion, service/delivery stop per­for­mance, ser­vice radius, fuel con­sump­tion and pay­roll. These insights can be used to iden­tify areas for fleet and cus­tomer ser­vice improvement.

Addi­tion­ally, the data in this report details how, on aver­age, fleet oper­a­tors have an oppor­tu­nity to sig­nif­i­cantly improve fleet pro­duc­tiv­ity and cost effi­ciency through the appli­ca­tion of busi­ness intelligence-driven fleet management.

Fleet­Beat also presents a unique roll-up of the broad eco­nomic and envi­ron­men­tal impact of telem­at­ics adop­tion by com­mer­cial fleets based on detailed, real world indus­try bench­mark data from Fleet­mat­ics com­bined with com­mer­cial vehi­cle data from estab­lished third party data providers.

 
Driving the Global Fleet  
Stuart Donnelly, Chief Regional Officer, Northern Europe

Euro­pean fleet man­age­ment spe­cial­ist, Fleet Logis­tics Inter­na­tional, has launched a new salary sac­ri­fice car scheme in the UK, cal­cu­lated to be 10% cheaper than con­ven­tional schemes as multi-bidding is applied to every new car via a panel of fun­ders to find the most attrac­tive rate for the driver.

Thought to be the first of its kind to be struc­tured this way and to be intro­duced by a fleet man­age­ment provider rather than a leas­ing com­pany, the new scheme, called Fleet­BEN­E­FIT, is open to any sized orga­ni­za­tion, although research sug­gests that the opti­mal size is a min­i­mum of 500 employees.

READ MORE





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.
PHH
Customizing global fleet management to achieve your goals.
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.
The CEI Group Inc.
North America's largest accident management and fleet driver safety company.
GPS Insight
GPS Insight offers GPS tracking solutions to meet your organization's unique requirements and challenges.
PARS
PARS' mission is to provide you with high-quality service at competitive prices for all of your transportation needs.