By Matt Betz, Vice Pres­i­dent of Busi­ness Devel­op­ment, Motus, LLC

It goes with­out say­ing, that in a fleet career that has spanned five decades, I have been wit­ness to numer­ous changes. Sure, the basics remain the same; Acqui­si­tion Man­age­ment, Main­te­nance Man­age­ment, Risk Man­age­ment, Infor­ma­tion Man­age­ment, and Busi­ness Man­age­ment, to name a few. Over the years, how­ever, a num­ber of dif­fer­ent issues have grabbed our focus from time-to-time. These include the move to out­sourced fleet man­age­ment, tax law changes, fuel crises, and numer­ous other fleet-impacting developments.

That is why I was hon­ored when asked by the folks at Fleet Man­age­ment Weekly to write a recur­ring col­umn speak­ing about one of the newest changes that I’ve noticed in our indus­try – the grow­ing focus on the Mod­ern Mobile Worker.

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For the first time, For­tune teamed up with Travel + Leisure to sur­vey read­ers about how they travel for work today. These expe­ri­enced busi­ness trav­el­ers, who aver­age nine trips a year both in the U.S. and abroad, shared insights into the best—and worst—parts of life on the road.

They were asked about their pri­or­i­ties and pain points, what they love about busi­ness trips, and what dri­ves them to the brink. They were also asked to reveal which apps and web­sites they’re addicted to and the hotels and air­lines that make life away from home eas­ier and more productive.

The result: the inau­gural Best in Busi­ness Travel sur­vey—take a look at the world and mind­set of today’s road warrior.

When we asked Dan Shive, Vice Pres­i­dent of Risk Man­age­ment Ser­vices at Lease­Plan USA, what the major fleet con­cerns are today, he responded that using cell phones while dri­ving has become a national epi­demic. We all know that there are a patch­work of dif­fer­ent state laws out there — address­ing hand-held and hands-free devices, and com­plete bans — but Dan believes we are see­ing these laws change and evolve.

“I think if you look at most of the infor­ma­tion and stud­ies out there, they indi­cate that the device is not the issue. It is the fact that you are on a phone call and that your cog­ni­tive dis­trac­tion is tak­ing over, ver­sus pay­ing atten­tion to dri­ving. That is really the prob­lem; it is not nec­es­sar­ily the device. My gut feel­ing tells me that we are see­ing the pro­gres­sion of laws that first allowed hand-held, then hands-free, and even­tu­ally they will move to full cell phone bans.”

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It might seem like just a minor infrac­tion, nudg­ing the speedome­ter a few miles an hour over the limit. Or maybe you’ve hit the gas, instead of the brake, when the stop­light was about to turn red.

The real­ity is that the over­whelm­ing major­ity of Amer­i­can motorists rou­tinely break the law while dri­ving, about one in five doing so on a daily basis, accord­ing to a new sur­vey by CouponCodesPro.com. Two out of three motorists admit they’ve bro­ken the law at one time or another.

READ MORE to get the statistics.

UK Leas­ing and fleet man­age­ment spe­cial­ist, Fleet Alliance, has won the award for the Best App at this year’s Techie Awards, orga­nized by Busi­ness­Car mag­a­zine, for its e-fleet mobile app, a break­through web appli­ca­tion that makes life sim­pler for dri­vers and pro­vides bet­ter con­trol for fleet managers.

The e-fleet mobile app allows dri­vers to update their mileage records remotely from any loca­tion and feed directly into Fleet Alliance’s cloud-based fleet man­age­ment and report­ing suite, e-fleet. As a result, fleet man­agers can mon­i­tor accu­mu­lat­ing mileages more effec­tively and pro­duce pre­dic­tive mileage reports to iden­tify those vehi­cles in dan­ger of exceed­ing con­tract mileages.

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With glob­al­iza­tion, a fleet man­ager has to stay on top of the intri­ca­cies of U.S. tax­a­tion and the tax poli­cies of every coun­try their com­pany runs vehi­cles in. It can be a com­plex web of fuel taxes, Value Added Tax­a­tion (VATs), as well as envi­ron­men­tal and insur­ance con­cerns. There’s no way around it, but there is a way to get a firm grip on it.

NAFA’s Inter­na­tional Fleet Acad­emy (IFA) pro­vides fleet pro­fes­sion­als with global duties the trusted, inti­mate envi­ron­ment to dis­cuss such sub­jects, as well as the infor­ma­tion they need to take informed, proac­tive actions. The fourth annual IFA will take place Novem­ber 5–7 at Rosen Shin­gle Creek in Orlando, FL. On Thurs­day, Novem­ber 6, Bart Van­ham, Part­ner, BVH&C Con­sult­ing, Namur, Bel­gium presents ‘What You Need to Know about Fleet and Tax­a­tion around the Globe.’

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We’d like to share with Fleet Man­age­ment Weekly read­ers an exclu­sive pre­sen­ta­tion from Telem­at­ics Update with Kevin Link, SVP of Ver­i­zon Telem­at­ics on the oppor­tu­ni­ties that auto­mo­tive can reap from the Inter­net of Things (IoT).

The pre­sen­ta­tion includes insights into how the IoT will affect the day-to-day life of dri­vers to see how it can improve the car own­er­ship expe­ri­ence. It will also help you to under­stand the chal­lenges fac­ing the inte­gra­tion of cars and the con­nected world, includ­ing inter­op­er­abil­ity and secu­rity, so you can plan your strategy.

The good news is that the telem­at­ics indus­try is bet­ter placed than you may think to seize the oppor­tu­ni­ties in this emerg­ing space. Learn how to use this to your busi­ness advan­tage. Click here to enter your details and get access to the presentation.

Intel­li­gent Mecha­tronic Sys­tems (IMS) is unveil­ing the IMS Con­nected Car Expe­ri­ence, demon­strat­ing real-time dri­ver coach­ing, dri­ver health mon­i­tor­ing inte­grated with wear­able devices and distraction-free tech­nol­ogy that sup­ports smarter dri­ver decisions.

World-renowned experts in con­nected car tech­nol­ogy with a port­fo­lio of 145 patents, IMS is show­cas­ing a unique, real-time expe­ri­ence with this dri­vable vehi­cle pow­ered by the Dri­veSync® plat­form. Insight gained from wear­able tech­nol­ogy is trans­formed into antic­i­pated dri­ver behaviors.

READ MORE to learn how it works

Does your fleet have a sus­tain­abil­ity ini­tia­tive? Imple­ment­ing sus­tain­abil­ity prac­tices will improve your mobile busi­ness on a num­ber of lev­els, and will show your cus­tomers that your fleet is tak­ing action to limit your envi­ron­men­tal impact. GPS track­ing solu­tions, like GPS Insight, can help you achieve your sus­tain­abil­ity goals by mon­i­tor­ing fuel con­sump­tion, green­house gas emis­sions, fleet uti­liza­tion, and more.

READ ON to learn more about how GPS track­ing solu­tions help iden­tify areas where you can cut fuel with­out tak­ing a hit to your fleet’s productivity. 

On Sep­tem­ber 5, 2014, Phillip E. Russo, CAE, Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer for NAFA Fleet Man­age­ment Asso­ci­a­tion, sent a let­ter to the Hon­or­able Gina McCarthy, Admin­is­tra­tor, Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency (EPA) and the Hon­or­able David J. Fried­man, Act­ing Admin­is­tra­tor, National High­way Traf­fic Safety Admin­is­tra­tion (NHTSA). The let­ter was in regard to the national pro­gram to reduce green­house gas (GHG) emis­sions and improve fuel effi­ciency from medium and heavy-duty trucks and buses, known as “Phase 2.”

“NAFA Fleet Man­age­ment Asso­ci­a­tion is seek­ing a uni­form, national pro­gram to address green­house gas emis­sions and fuel effi­ciency that reflects the com­mer­cial needs of voca­tional vehi­cle fleets,” Russo said, extend­ing an invi­ta­tion for the reg­u­la­tory teams draft­ing these rules to meet with NAFA’s Phase 2 Work­group. “NAFA, with exper­tise in fleet man­age­ment, stands as a will­ing part­ner in craft­ing reg­u­la­tions that achieve the goals of lower emis­sions and bet­ter fuel economy.”

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