AAA: One in six fatal traf­fic acci­dents result from drowsy dri­ving

By Mike Sheldrick

The recent injury to come­dian Tracy Mor­gan and the death of Jimmy Mack, a fel­low pas­sen­ger, after a col­li­sion on the NJ Turn­pike has focused national atten­tion on the prob­lem of drowsy dri­ving. About time.

The inci­dent on June 9 involved Kevin Roper, a Wal­mart dri­ver, who NJ state police said, had gone with­out sleep for 24 hours before he hit the star’s lim­ou­sine. Wal­mart said in a state­ment that the truck’s dri­ver was in com­pli­ance with fed­eral hours-of ser­vice require­ments. “Fed­eral law requires dri­vers to work no more than 14 hours for any shift and 11 hours of dri­ving.” NJ police charged the Wal­mart dri­ver with vehic­u­lar homi­cide under a law that pro­hibits dri­ving after 24 hours with­out sleep.

READ MORE to learn the high stakes fleets have in this vital issue.

Ear­lier this year, we attended a ses­sion at NTEA’s Work Truck Show & Green Truck Sum­mit: “Analy­sis of Alter­na­tive Fuels and Green Tech­nol­ogy from a Return on Invest­ment Per­spec­tive.” The pre­sen­ters were Gregg Hodg­don, CAFM, Direc­tor of Fleet Oper­a­tions at E.A. Sween Com­pany and Brian Matuszewski, Man­ager – Strate­gic Con­sult­ing, Sus­tain­able Strate­gies at ARI.

We thought it was a ter­rific pre­sen­ta­tion and were eager to learn more about how Gregg and Brian — along with sev­eral OEMs and fleet sup­pli­ers — worked together to lower E.A. Sween’s fleet costs, increase its effi­ciency, reduce its car­bon foot­print, and make its dri­vers happy. What more could you ask!

READ MORE to learn how sus­tain­abil­ity award win­ner Gregg worked with his sup­pli­ers to lower costs and increase efficiency.

A cra­dle to grave, holis­tic approach to green­ing your fleet

Brian Matuszewski is Man­ager – Strate­gic Con­sult­ing, Sus­tain­able Strate­gies, for ARI, and in this role, guides ARI’s clients through the process of under­stand­ing the require­ments, the ROI impli­ca­tions, and the emis­sions impact of imple­ment­ing alter­na­tive fuel solutions.

In this inter­view, Brian tells us how he and the ARI Sus­tain­able Strate­gies team approach the intri­ca­cies of the entire ana­lyt­i­cal process – first learn­ing the fleet’s objec­tives, under­stand­ing the fleet’s makeup, usage, geo­graph­i­cal foot­print, and dis­tinc­tive needs. Once they under­stand the require­ments and needs to suc­cess­fully meet the fleet’s pur­pose and mis­sion, they guide the fleet through the var­i­ous clean tech­nol­ogy options that make sense for them.

READ MORE about how clean tech­nolo­gies can help reduce your fleet’s TCO.

More mid­size cars are sold in Amer­ica than any other type of vehi­cle, and nearly every main­stream car com­pany offers one. J.D. Power and Asso­ciates sum­ma­rizes  the 10 most pop­u­lar mid­size cars avail­able for sale in Amer­ica today.

#1 — 2014 Toy­ota Camry
The Toy­ota Camry is the most pop­u­lar mid­size car in Amer­ica. It is offered in basic L, pop­u­lar LE, sporty SE, and well-equipped XLE trim lev­els with a choice between a 178-horsepower 4-cylinder and a 268-horsepower V-6 engine, each paired with an auto­matic transmission.

#2 — 2014 Honda Accord
The sec­ond best-selling mid­size car in Amer­ica is offered as a 2-door coupe or 4-door sedan. Coupes are avail­able in LX-S, EX, and EX-L trim lev­els, while sedans can be pur­chased in LX, Sport, EX, EX-L, and Tour­ing trims.

READ MORE to find out which other vehi­cles made the cut.

What’s a doc fee, any­way? Doc fees cover the cost a deal­er­ship incurs to process a vehi­cle pur­chase. In other words, they pay for all the paper­work (and per­son­nel) involved with sell­ing you that shiny new ride. Doc fees orig­i­nated when deal­er­ships sep­a­rated their Finance and Insur­ance depart­ments, com­monly dubbed F&I, from the rest of the deal­er­ship around the 1960s.

Doc fees can have a lot of names: con­veyance fees, pro­cess­ing fees or ser­vice and han­dling fees. They can make a real dif­fer­ence in the final price, too, and where you buy your car can have a big impact. For exam­ple: a deal­er­ship in greater New York charge a $75 doc fee while a New Jer­sey dealer wanted $349.

That’s because New York state has a $75 max­i­mum for doc fees, accord­ing to the Greater New York Auto­mo­bile Deal­ers Asso­ci­a­tion. New Jer­sey, like 34 other states and the Dis­trict of Colum­bia, has no such cap.

READ MORE to learn about dealer doc fees.

Have you been hes­i­tat­ing to imple­ment a GPS track­ing solu­tion to your fleet? For some fleet exec­u­tives, the thought of chang­ing busi­ness oper­a­tions can be a lot to take on: it may seem like it will be dif­fi­cult to use, that employ­ees will be unhappy, or that it is too costly. Although it seems like a big change, the ben­e­fits you will obtain from GPS track­ing are unlimited.

READ MORE

The Net­work of Employ­ers for Traf­fic Safety (NETS) has launched their Com­pre­hen­sive Guide to Road Safety (Guide) for employ­ers with large or small fleets and new, devel­op­ing or advanced road safety programs

“The Guide pro­vides an excel­lent start­ing point for com­pa­nies and orga­ni­za­tions of all sizes with all types of fleets want­ing to put in place a road safety pro­gram for their oper­a­tions,” said Mike Wat­son, Global Road Safety Man­ager at Shell Inter­na­tional Petro­leum Com­pany and mem­ber of NETS’ Board of Directors.

“The Guide also serves as a tool for fleet safety man­agers to com­pare their exist­ing pro­grams to those of lead­ing employ­ers in road safety.”

READ MORE and down­load the Guide free of charge.

The fleet pro­fes­sion can be daunt­ing for those who are new to the indus­try. NAFA’s Essen­tials of Fleet Man­age­ment Sem­i­nar brings together a com­pre­hen­sive per­spec­tive of what a fleet man­ager does, and pro­vides the edu­ca­tion to do it even better.

In the US, NAFA will be hold­ing its next Essen­tials of Fleet Man­age­ment Sem­i­nar (EFMS) July 8–10, at the Rosen Shin­gle Creek resort in Orlando, FL. This sem­i­nar is designed for new fleet pro­fes­sion­als with less than 5 years of expe­ri­ence. Online reg­is­tra­tion closes on July 1.

In Canada, EFMS will be held Sep­tem­ber 9–11 at the Hol­i­day Inn Select – Mon­treal Centre-Ville in Mon­treal. The sem­i­nar is designed to teach the build­ing blocks that will help fleet man­agers run an effi­cient fleet, and will do so with infor­ma­tion spe­cific to Cana­dian reg­u­la­tion and finance.

Read more to learn how NAFA’s EFMS can help you and your career!

For many years the per­cep­tion was that a diesel engine would last longer and was less expen­sive to oper­ate than their gaso­line coun­ter­parts. That has changed dras­ti­cally over the past 10 years as emis­sions stan­dards become tighter for diesel engines. Lead­ers, such as Ford, con­tinue to inno­vate and build bet­ter gaso­line engines that are prepped for propane and nat­ural gas.

The com­plex­ity and cost of diesel engines, after treat­ments and fuel are dri­ving fleets to find alter­na­tives and instead of tran­si­tion­ing back to gaso­line, there is a grow­ing move­ment towards propane auto­gas in class 4–7 trucks.

Read More to Find Out Why.

Last week, NAFA Fleet Man­age­ment Asso­ci­a­tion Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer Phillip Russo, CAE, reached out to lead­ers in Wash­ing­ton urg­ing con­tin­ued fund­ing for the Diesel Emis­sion Reduc­tion Act (DERA). Let­ters from NAFA were sent to Jack Reed, Chair­man of the Appro­pri­a­tions Sub­com­mit­tee on Inte­rior, Envi­ron­ment, and Related Agen­cies; Lisa Murkowski, Rank­ing Mem­ber for the Appro­pri­a­tions Sub­com­mit­tee on Inte­rior, Envi­ron­ment, and Related Agen­cies; Bar­bara A. Mikul­ski, Chair­woman of the Sen­ate Com­mit­tee on Appro­pri­a­tions; and Richard Shelby, Rank­ing Mem­ber for the Sen­ate Com­mit­tee on Appropriations.

“Mil­lions of older diesel engines are still in use by fleets. Thank­fully, emis­sions from these older engines may be con­trolled with the use of mod­ern, American-made con­trol tech­nolo­gies that reduce emis­sions and cre­ate jobs here at home,” said Russo in the com­mu­ni­ca­tions. “Enacted through the Energy Pol­icy Act of 2005, DERA pro­vides fund­ing for fleets to install retro­fit tech­nolo­gies on exist­ing heavy-duty diesel vehi­cles and engines, or replace engines and equip­ment, reduc­ing harm­ful emis­sions by as much as 90 percent.”

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