January 13, 2014
Editor's Analysis & Top Industry News


Sutton_Janice Letter from the Editor — Shine That Light on You!

The begin­ning of a new year often brings us face to face with improve­ments we want to make in our career. We are for­tu­nate in the fleet com­mu­nity to be able to turn to orga­ni­za­tions such as NAFA to help us hone our skills, includ­ing giv­ing us some coach­ing on how to present our value […]


2014 ACT Expo Webinar: ‘How to Integrate Alternative Fuels into Your Fleet Operations’

Hear from two lead­ing pub­lic and pri­vate fleets about how they eval­u­ated the eco­nomic and envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits of AFVs for their fleet oper­a­tions, as well as how to select the right equip­ment and fuel options, secure fund­ing and tax cred­its, and main­tain and oper­ate equip­ment safely and cost-effectively. The ACT­Expo webi­nar series is designed to […]


National safety council logo NSC Surveys Cell Phone Policies

Employer poli­cies to help pre­vent dis­tracted dri­ving on the job are being passed by a grow­ing num­ber of employ­ers. Are you one of them? The National Safety Coun­cil is ask­ing employ­ers to par­tic­i­pate in a short sur­vey about their organization’s cell phone pol­icy to help them under­stand what employ­ers are includ­ing in cell phone poli­cies, but […]


100 best fleets 100 Best Fleets to be Recognized at NAFA I&E

For over a decade, the 100 Best Fleets pro­gram has been rec­og­niz­ing fleets through­out North Amer­ica.  List after list of win­ners and hon­or­able men­tions has con­tained dozens of mem­bers of NAFA Fleet Man­age­ment Asso­ci­a­tion,  includ­ing the com­plete top ten in last year’s list.  In 2014, the award pre­sen­ta­tion will be co-located at NAFA’s annual Institute […]


guzman-mario

VIDEO: A Student of Fleet Management

Mario Guz­man — the Fleet Admin­is­tra­tor for the City of Boyn­ton Beach, Florida, talks about get­ting involved with NAFA, get­ting involved with the CAFM pro­gram, and the ben­e­fits of hav­ing a well-rounded mentor.

Time to Sell Trucks?
Mitchell_Jack_Penske_Skype
  How to Sell Class 3, 4 & 5 Used Trucks
 

Penske Used Trucks rec­om­mends that sell­ers start with a new updated web­site and mobile app to post all of your used truck inven­tory that just came off lease or out of rental ser­vice. Tout your main­te­nance records, tar­get small busi­ness own­ers, mail out a Sell Sheet, sell to 2,000 deal­ers and send the slow movers to auc­tion. See how Penske Used Trucks, one of the largest resellers of trucks, does it all.


Click here to watch video
Remarketing Today
Ricky Beggs and NAAA leaders
  Beggs on the Used Car Market – NAAA
 

National Auto Auc­tion Asso­ci­a­tion lead­ers Jack Neshe and Ellie John­son offer mar­ket insights and plans to sup­port the whole­sale mar­ket channels.


Click here to read more



The Fleet Spot


Joe LaRosa Joe LaRosa: Keys to Managing the Global Fleet

Joe LaRosa directs a fleet of some 28,000 vehi­cles spread across 106 coun­tries for Merck. A long-time mem­ber of NAFA, he serves the orga­ni­za­tion as its Inter­na­tional Vice Pres­i­dent and in Tuc­son last fall, was a speaker at NAFA’s 3rd Annual Inter­na­tional Fleet Acad­emy. He tells us about his career and his own strate­gies for man­ag­ing this huge global fleet spread across many time zones.

Pete Dondlinger Auto Truck Group Names New Execs

Auto Truck Group announced three new exec­u­tive appoint­ments: Pete Dondlinger has been named Vice Pres­i­dent of Oper­a­tions; Brad Blanco has been named Vice Pres­i­dent of IT, Finance, and Admin­is­tra­tion; and Pam Bodzioch has been named HR Man­ager. Dondlinger — who was serv­ing as the Direc­tor of Rail­road Oper­a­tions prior to this role — will now […]

Tim Johnson Tim Johnson Joins Donlen

Tim John­son has joined Donlen as Vice Pres­i­dent of Busi­ness Devel­op­ment, West­ern Region. John­son is a suc­cess­ful sales exec­u­tive with more than 15 years’ expe­ri­ence in account man­age­ment and new busi­ness devel­op­ment. He has held man­age­ment and sales posi­tions in a vari­ety of indus­tries, most notably Enter­prise Fleet Man­age­ment, Speakeasy Inc., and Xora Inc., where […]

Your Brilliant Career  

In many com­pa­nies fleet costs trail only wages and salaries as a cor­po­rate expense. Con­trol­ling expenses has always been a goal of cor­po­rate man­age­ment, but today, the pres­sure is greater than ever and shows no signs of slack­en­ing in the future. That puts a pre­mium on every fleet oper­a­tion to trim costs with­out dimin­ish­ing the […]

 
Solving Fleet Fuel Challenges  
EXPERT ADVICE FROM ARI's DAN SHEPHERD

There are sev­eral ways your fleet can save money on fuel when spec’ing medium-duty trucks. And achiev­ing fuel econ­omy gains could be as sim­ple as tak­ing the time to refresh a truck’s spec. Dan Shep­herd, truck spec ana­lyst for ARI, points out that torque rat­ing is an impor­tant fac­tor when choos­ing a medium-duty truck. Shepherd […]

 
Fleet Conferences  

If you have a work truck fleet, or you mar­ket to fleets with this equip­ment, you will want to be in Indi­anapo­lis on March 4th for the open­ing of the Green Truck Sum­mit, held in con­junc­tion with the 2014 Work Truck Show which opens on March 5th.  The two events fea­ture world-class edu­ca­tional ses­sions along […]




Fleet Trends & Issues


kbb_logo22Most and Least Popular Cars Compared Across U.S.

Cli­mate and geog­ra­phy play key roles in defin­ing a wide vari­ety of regional dif­fer­ences across the coun­try, but they’re not the only fac­tors accord­ing to KBB.com research.

“It seems what is pop­u­lar in one region is over­looked in another,” said Arthur Henry, ana­lyst at Kel­ley Blue Book.  “West­ern­ers pre­fer fuel-efficient brands with style, such as Tesla and Scion, but those same brands are shunned in the South and North­east.  Those liv­ing in the South grav­i­tate toward brands that are man­u­fac­tured in the same region.  Shop­pers from the Mid­west also have an affin­ity for brands head­quar­tered or pro­duced in their own backyard.”

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distracted_drivingDistracted Driving More Dangerous for Novice Drivers

The find­ings from a newly-released dis­tracted dri­ving study that mon­i­tored 151 licensed U.S. dri­vers — 42 novices and 109 expe­ri­enced dri­vers – reveal that the things that allow a dri­ver to talk — such as dial­ing or reach­ing to get to a ring­ing phone – are the real danger.

For the novice dri­ver, dial­ing a phone is more dan­ger­ous than retriev­ing text mes­sages, and reach­ing for an object while dri­ving is more likely to pro­duce an acci­dent than eat­ing behind the wheel.

Even expe­ri­enced dri­vers face a dangerously-high risk of get­ting into an acci­dent while manip­u­lat­ing a cell phone.

READ MORE

Remarketing Roundup  

Tom Webb, Chief Econ­o­mist, Man­heim Con­sult­ing: Whole­sale pric­ing fin­ished 2013 down 1.9% from year-end lev­els of 2012, Man­heim said dur­ing its quar­terly con­fer­ence call. Used vehi­cle prices in US declined slightly in the last quar­ter of 2013 but remained at his­tor­i­cally high lev­els as con­sumer demand stayed strong. While declin­ing for the year, val­ues were […]

 
Global Moves & Promotions  

Mark Bryan – who was serv­ing as ARI’s Vice Pres­i­dent of Global Oper­a­tions just prior to this new posi­tion – will now be respon­si­ble for all of ARI’s Euro­pean busi­nesses, includ­ing oper­a­tions in the UK, Ger­many, Bel­gium, France and Spain. He has also served as Vice Pres­i­dent of Euro­pean Inte­gra­tion and Act­ing Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of […]

 
 




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