June 2, 2014
Editor's Analysis & Top Industry News


Sutton_Janice Expert Marketing to Fleet Decision Makers

This week marks the debut of A Call to Action (for Fleet Providers)’, writ­ten by fleet brand­ing and mar­ket­ing author­ity Ed Pierce. An exclu­sive with Fleet Man­age­ment Weekly, Ed’s new monthly col­umn is writ­ten expressly for prod­uct and ser­vice providers who want to con­nect and influ­ence fleet deci­sion mak­ers. Ed’s fleet indus­try mar­ket­ing career spans 21 years and he is up-to-the minute in his assess­ment of the fleet mar­ket­ing arena. Don’t miss his inau­gural col­umn this week in Fleet Mar­ket­ing.

At NTEA’s The Work Truck Show, we thor­oughly enjoyed talk­ing with Steve Jansen, Direc­tor of Truck Fleet Ser­vices at Donlen. He has an engag­ing and out­go­ing per­son­al­ity and clearly is an expert in truck fleet man­age­ment. Our inter­view with Steve: ’ What’s Trend­ing in Truck Fleet Man­age­ment?’ appears in Truck Fleet Man­age­ment; if trucks touch your life, you will want to hear what he has to say.

Drive safety,

Jan­ice Sutton


Clarus PHH Arval Releases Three New Software Application Platforms

PHH Arval has launched three new tech­nol­ogy plat­forms to replace PHH Inter­ac­tive, its cur­rent Web-based solu­tion plat­form: Clarus, Clarus Dri­ver, and PHH Xplore

By Mike Sheldrick, Senior Edi­tor, Fleet Man­age­ment Weekly

Fleet Man­age­ment Weekly spoke about the new releases with Robert San­dler, senior vice pres­i­dent, Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence and Enter­prise Con­sult­ing, and Chris Brown, direc­tor of Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence. “These tools enable our cus­tomers to improve the pro­duc­tiv­ity of their fleet and to ensure dri­ver com­pli­ance with their cor­po­rate fleet poli­cies,” San­dler said. “They allow our clients improved access to data, the abil­ity to sift through that data quickly, and to make guided and pre­dic­tive ana­lyt­i­cal deci­sions based on the data.”

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catten-corey-555

VIDEO: An Electronic Hours of Service Compliance Advantage

When it comes to elec­tronic hours of ser­vice, inthinc has peo­ple on all the com­mit­tees that mat­ter — from the Fed­eral Car­rier Motor Safety Asso­ci­a­tion to the Amer­i­can Truck­ing Asso­ci­a­tion and more — which is a big advan­tage for their customers.

VIDEO: Running Fleets Efficiently
quimby-mike
  The Power of End-to-End Solutions
 

End-to-end solu­tions means a one-stop-shop from mate­r­ial han­dling all the way through class 8 trac­tor trail­ers — includ­ing all of the req­ui­site ser­vices that can help you run your busi­ness more effi­ciently and cost effectively.


Click here to watch video
VIDEO: Global Trends
lemos-luiz
  Brazilian Fleet Trends: Outsourcing and Telematics
 

Of the five or six mil­lion cor­po­rate vehi­cles in Brazil, only about 7% are actu­ally being out­sourced — but it sounds like that’s chang­ing. There’s also poten­tial oppor­tu­nity for telem­at­ics com­pa­nies in Brazil.


Click here to read more



The Fleet Spot


M Resort las vegas Opening Soon in Las Vegas: AFLA 2014 Annual Conference

‘Learn, Inno­vate, Win’ — Improv­ing Your Odds for Fleet Success

Today’s busy fleet pro­fes­sion­als have so many demands on their time, but invest­ing a few days in Las Vegas in Sep­tem­ber at the AFLA 2014 Annual Con­fer­ence could be a major career boost. This must-attend fleet con­fer­ence takes place Sep­tem­ber 8–10 at the M Resort & Spa. Inspir­ing keynote speak­ers, thought-provoking edu­ca­tional ses­sions and superb net­work­ing — all designed to help you improve your odds for fleet suc­cess!

Click here for reg­is­tra­tion information

Gene Ayres Gene S. Ayres Named Executive VP Sales & Marketing for PALFINGER Liftgates

Gene Ayres has been named Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent of Sales and Mar­ket­ing for PALFINGER Lift­gates. Pre­vi­ously, Ayres spent 36 years at Mor­gan Cor­po­ra­tion; as VP of Sales and Mar­ket­ing for the last eight years with respon­si­bil­i­ties for tech­ni­cal sales and new prod­uct development.

In this new role, Gene will report directly to Hakan Peter­son, pres­i­dent at PALFINGER Lift­gates. “We look for­ward to lever­ag­ing Gene’s expe­ri­ence and back­ground as we con­tinue devel­op­ing lift­gate sales in North Amer­ica” explains Peter­son, ” This oppor­tu­nity will per­mit Gene and his team to offer the best value solu­tions for our many customers.”

NAFA-Logo NAFA’s 2014 Conference Reports Largest Fleet Manager Attendance In Fleet Industry

With the final atten­dance num­bers in hand, NAFA proudly announces the 2014 Insti­tute & Expo remains the industry’s largest learn­ing and net­work­ing event by bring­ing together the most fleet man­age­ment pro­fes­sion­als year after year.

“The I&E just keeps reaf­firm­ing its dom­i­nant posi­tion in the world of fleet. Fleet man­agers from all over North Amer­ica make it a ‘must-see, must-do’ con­fer­ence, and they are spread­ing the word,” said NAFA Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer Phillip E. Russo, CAE. “It is tremen­dous news — to know that, as the I&E keeps scal­ing up in size, the demand is right at pace.”

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autobrake More Cars Earn Top Ratings in Avoiding Crashes with Autobrake

New rat­ings for sys­tems that help dri­vers avoid front-to-rear crashes were released by the Insur­ance Insti­tute for High­way Safety.

Auto man­u­fac­tur­ers are mak­ing strides in adopt­ing the most ben­e­fi­cial sys­tems with auto­matic brak­ing capa­bil­i­ties and are offer­ing the fea­tures on a wider vari­ety of mod­els. Twenty-one of 24 cars and SUVs, all 2014 mod­els unless noted, earn an advanced or higher rat­ing in the lat­est round of IIHS evaluations.

“We are already see­ing improve­ments from automak­ers since the ini­tial launch of our rat­ings last Sep­tem­ber,” says David Zuby, IIHS exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent and chief research offi­cer. “BMW and Lexus, for exam­ple, have added more brak­ing capa­bil­ity to their sys­tems, which has paid off in higher ratings.”

READ MORE to find out which vehi­cles have per­fect scores.

Fleet Marketing  

This is the first Fleet Man­age­ment Weekly–exclu­sive col­umn writ­ten by brand­ing and mar­ket­ing author­ity Ed Pierce expressly for prod­uct and ser­vice providers who want to con­nect and influ­ence fleet decision-makers.

Hav­ing just eclipsed 21 years of fleet indus­try mar­ket­ing, I can con­fi­dently say this is the most excit­ing time to mar­ket your com­pany, prod­ucts and ser­vices to fleet decision-makers. As fast as tech­nol­ogy is chang­ing the fleet prod­ucts and ser­vices you are pro­mot­ing, it is chang­ing the media that you use to pro­mote them.

Twenty years ago, Mar­ket­ing sup­ported sales by cre­at­ing aware­ness. No sales rep wanted to make a cold call or go to a meet­ing and hear, “Who is (name of com­pany)?” Today, stud­ies show that about 71 per­cent of enter­prise pur­chase deci­sions in the U.S. begin with research con­ducted online. More so, busi­ness buy­ers do not con­tact sup­pli­ers directly until 57 per­cent of the pur­chase process is complete.

Obvi­ously, aware­ness is now just the first of sev­eral crit­i­cal mar­ket­ing goals. In this age of the well-informed buyer, earn­ing a great rep­u­ta­tion, cre­at­ing a dif­fer­en­ti­ated posi­tion, pro­vid­ing quan­tifi­able value, build­ing a strong base of cus­tomer “advo­cates,” and deliv­er­ing those mes­sages effec­tively through mul­ti­ple chan­nels are your other impor­tant mar­ket­ing goals.

Mul­ti­ple Channels

Not that long ago, there was just one media chan­nel, that was, “earned”. Com­pa­nies either paid (adver­tis­ing) for access or earned edi­to­r­ial cov­er­age based on news­wor­thi­ness (pub­lic rela­tions). Yes, you could dis­sem­i­nate a cus­tomer newslet­ter, but dis­tri­b­u­tion was lim­ited to cus­tomers and pos­si­bly a prospect list.

In today’s dig­i­tal world, “earned” media has expanded to include ban­ner adver­tis­ing, Google Ads (AdWords), native adver­tis­ing and more. Fleet Man­age­ment Weekly was one of the dig­i­tal media pio­neers in any indus­try, and it is still a great exam­ple of how “earned” media must be an impor­tant part of your mar­ket­ing mix. But the web has ush­ered in a sec­ond media chan­nel, that is, “owned.” The “owned” chan­nel includes your own cor­po­rate web­site, microsites, land­ing pages, video, blogs, social media pres­ence, back links, and con­tent mar­ket­ing. The “owned” chan­nel pro­vides com­pletely new oppor­tu­ni­ties to effec­tively reach fleet decision-makers.

In the next col­umn, we’ll take a look at trends and oppor­tu­ni­ties related to the “earned” media chan­nel as they per­tain to the fleet indus­try. I wel­come feed­back, ques­tions, sug­ges­tions, expe­ri­ences and dif­fer­ing points of view from fleet prod­uct and ser­vice providers as well as from fleet man­agers, cor­po­rate buy­ers, con­sul­tants, trade asso­ci­a­tion and media rep­re­sen­ta­tives who want to help build bet­ter con­nec­tions. Just send an email to [email protected].

 
Vehicle Technology  

By Mike Sheldrick, Senior Edi­tor, Fleet Man­age­ment Weekly

Google will build 100–200 pro­to­type dri­ver­less elec­tric cars by the end of the year. Com­pany Co-founder Sergey Brin revealed the project last week. It’s a plas­tic, bubble-shaped two seater with­out steer­ing wheels or brakes, except that cur­rent state laws require them and dur­ing early test­ing, com­pany dri­vers can still take con­trol with famil­iar devices.

Top speed is 25 mph. It’s not clear whether Google plans ulti­mately to man­u­fac­ture the vehi­cles if they prove to be suc­cess­ful, or seek a part­ner­ship with an auto man­u­fac­turer or a tier one sup­plier. One rumor is that the pro­to­types will be built by Roush Indus­tries, an engi­neer­ing, design and man­u­fac­turer. In recent years, Roush has been promi­nent in equip­ping vehi­cles to oper­ate on propane.

READ MORE

 
 



Fleet Trends & Issues


HondaConsumer Reports Blasts Honda Accord Hybrid MPG Claim

The 2014 Honda Accord Hybrid is the lat­est among a grow­ing list of gas-electric mod­els to take hits for what crit­ics con­tend are overly opti­mistic and mis­lead­ing mileage claims.

It’s not the first time Honda has been faulted for its hybrid mileage rat­ings – an esti­mated 47 mpg on the 2014 Accord ver­sion – but it’s far from alone, Ford last year low­er­ing its own num­bers for the Fusion C-Max that ini­tially also had a 47 mpg rating.

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crashNew NHTSA Study Shows Motor Vehicle Crashes Have $871 Billion Impact on U.S. Citizens 

The U.S. Depart­ment of Transportation’s National High­way Traf­fic Safety Admin­is­tra­tion (NHTSA) released a new study that under­scores the high eco­nomic toll and soci­etal impact of motor vehi­cle crashes in the United States. The price tag for crashes comes at a heavy bur­den for Amer­i­cans at $871 bil­lion in eco­nomic loss and soci­etal harm.

“No amount of money can replace the life of a loved one, or stem the suf­fer­ing asso­ci­ated with motor vehi­cle crashes,” said U.S. Sec­re­tary Anthony Foxx.

READ MORE to learn about the key findings

UK mapThe Closer View: UK National and Regional Market Review

A new report from British Car Auc­tions (BCA)

With ris­ing new car vol­umes and strong demand for used cars, there can be lit­tle doubt that the eco­nomic recov­ery has reached the retail car sec­tor. How­ever, as the UK recov­ers from the eco­nomic down­turn, what do motorists really want and how might national and local mar­kets differ?

The Closer View: A National and Regional Mar­ket Review is a new BCA report by Pro­fes­sor Peter Cooke, Emer­i­tus Pro­fes­sor in Auto­mo­tive Man­age­ment, Uni­ver­sity of Buck­ing­ham, which addresses the range of issues affect­ing the country’s new and used car sec­tors and exam­ines how con­sumers might change their views on what cars to own and how they buy them.

Truck Fleet Management  

The truck fleet man­ager has a tough job. So, being able to access the resources and expert advice from a fleet man­age­ment provider with a team spe­cial­iz­ing in com­plex truck fleets is a boon.

Steve Jansen, direc­tor of Truck Fleet Ser­vices at Donlen, has more than 35 years of expe­ri­ence in trans­porta­tion, many of them in fleet. When he began telling us about the trends he is see­ing in the truck fleet arena we knew right away that we were going to get an insight­ful review of key issues.

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Toll Management  

Donlen has part­nered with Amer­i­can Traf­fic Solu­tions (ATS) Fleet Ser­vices to pro­vide a fully inte­grated toll man­age­ment pro­gram for their customers.

“We’ve taken toll man­age­ment to the next level by fully inte­grat­ing it within FleetWeb,” said Brad Kacsh, Direc­tor of Licens­ing Ser­vices. “Toll vio­la­tions account for more than half of all fleet vio­la­tions. Through a cus­tomized dash­board, fleets now have full insight into their toll pro­gram – which ulti­mately gives them con­trol over their toll spend and man­ages the risk and cost of toll violations.”

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Fleet Tracking Solutions  

When mak­ing the deci­sion of which GPS track­ing solu­tion is best for your busi­ness, you need to eval­u­ate based on the ben­e­fits and fea­tures you are look­ing to obtain. There are cer­tainly track­ing solu­tions that will only pro­vide the cur­rent loca­tions of your vehi­cles and have less upfront costs. If you are look­ing to gain full insight into your fleet’s activ­ity, then an advanced GPS track­ing solu­tion, like GPS Insight, is right for your business.

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