By Steve Bender, President Fleet Street Remarketing and outgoing AFLA President
As we all know, the last few years have been hard on fleet. But – as it always has – the industry has moved in a decidedly positive direction, and I am supremely confident that fleet’s best days are truly ahead.
So, considering all that we have to celebrate – and in an effort to put my own spin on the season – here is my holiday wish list and a few things I hope for all of us in 2024.
First, for fleet managers, I hope you receive all the vehicles you ordered and then some. Passenger cars, pickup trucks – class 5’s! As many as you want - whenever you want!
Safe Fleet, a leading supplier of fleet vehicle safety solutions, continues to expand its Commercial Vehicle division’s Safety-as-a-Service (SAAS) network, with a facility in Louisville, OH.
This new location will support Safe Fleet's tarping business and better service the Northeast Ohio dump truck & trailer manufacturers. For the time being, it will specialize in premium solutions from its family of tarping brands: Roll·Rite, Pulltarps, and Vango.
The new Louisville location will cater to open-top dump trailers, flatbed trailers, and dump trucks, with trailer pickup and delivery services for preferred customers.
Ford calls the F-150 Lightning its “smartest, most innovative” truck yet for a reason. The electric truck can do things the gas-powered version could only dream of.
According to the automaker’s recent patent, the Lightning’s frunk could gain an additional work surface. Ford’s patent, published on December 7, details a “front trunk including moveable platform.”
The patent describes a moveable platform that can be used as a work surface. In some cases, a removable platform replaces a portion of the Lightning’s front bumper. The platform can include a drawer and several storage compartments for various items. Although many would use Ford’s new Lightning frunk platform for work, it could also be used to upgrade your future tailgate parties or other events.
While specific auto brands don’t make people worse drivers, it seems to be true that certain types of drivers gravitate toward different makes and models. A recent study from LendingTree found that drivers of some brands rack up more accidents, DUIs, and other citations at much higher rates than others.
Ram drivers were the worst of the 30 brands LendingTree analyzed, with 32.90 incidents per 1,000 drivers between November 2022 and 2023. Only Tesla and Subaru came close, with 31.13 and 30.09 incidents, respectively.
Breaking things down further, Tesla drivers had the highest accident rates, followed by Ram and Subaru. The study also found that BMW drivers had the highest DUI rates, with almost twice the number of DUIs of the second-closest brand, Ram.
Digital mapping specialist TomTom has partnered with tech giant Microsoft to create an artificial intelligence-powered conversational assistant for vehicles.
The assistant will allow users to "converse naturally with their vehicles" and enable voice interaction with infotainment, location search, and vehicle command systems, the company said.
TomTom, which competes with Google Maps and the world's biggest mapping platform HERE, used various Microsoft services like its Azure OpenAI Service to create the voice assistant. The voice assistant can be integrated into other automotive infotainment systems and is also built into TomTom's Digital Cockpit, an open, modular in-vehicle infotainment platform, the Dutch map maker said.