It’s get­ting trick­ier to pre­dict the price per bar­rel of oil and its direct cor­re­la­tion to gaso­line and diesel prices – much more so than in the 1970s when OPEC could instantly throw a wrench in the gears.

As for this year, three lead­ing energy agen­cies have reported that pro­duc­tion out­side of OPEC should be increas­ing this year – with much of that com­ing from US shale fields.

Black Book’s Ricky Beggs expects the pat­tern to be sim­i­lar to the past two years for gas prices and its effect on small cars, hybrids, and elec­tric vehicles.

New and used truck sales should con­tinue to be strong this year, but they are affected by fed­eral fuel econ­omy stan­dards. Automak­ers are rolling out more fuel effi­cient trucks such as the new Ford F150 with a lot more light­weight aluminum.

Find out more about what these trends could mean for new and used vehi­cle prices this year.

GPS Insight will be host­ing a live webi­nar on Fri­day, Jan­u­ary 24^th, titled “How to Extend Vehi­cle & Asset Life­cy­cles with GPS Tracking.”

All per­son­nel respon­si­ble for fleet man­age­ment are invited to attend this webi­nar to learn how GPS track­ing soft­ware will reduce vehi­cle and asset life­cy­cles. Dur­ing the 30 minute pre­sen­ta­tion, exec­u­tives from GPS Insight will dis­cuss what you can do to stay on top of main­te­nance and con­trol vehi­cle wear and tear. You will also learn how to do it within the award-winning GPS track­ing platform.

All fleet man­age­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives in atten­dance for the dura­tion of the pre­sen­ta­tion will be entered to win 1 of 4 $100 gift cards. The win­ners will be noti­fied after the webinar.

Pre­sen­ters: Phil Eat­man, Regional Sales Rep­re­sen­ta­tive for GPS Insight and Kristin Lis­son, Tech­ni­cal Writer for GPS Insight

When: Fri­day, Jan­u­ary 24^th at 10am Pacific/1pm Eastern

Click here to sign up

Mark Your Cal­en­dar: AFLA 2014 Annual Conference

Reg­is­tra­tion is now open for the 2014 AFLA Con­fer­ence to be held this year in Las Vegas, Sep­tem­ber 7–10. The theme is per­fect for today’s busy fleet professional.

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The Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice has ruled that county vehi­cles are a tax­able com­mod­ity. Three coun­ties in West Vir­ginia have been audited, and, in some cases fined, for allow­ing employ­ees free use of vehi­cles that are pur­chased, fueled and main­tained by the county government.

Cabell County, WV work­ers will still be able use their assigned vehi­cles out­side of work hours and will pay a tax on the value of the vehi­cle that will likely run between $1,000 to $1,500 annu­ally, and that money will be deducted from an employee’s pay­check grad­u­ally over the course of a year.

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More than 100 com­pa­nies have already shared plans to intro­duce new prod­ucts at The Work Truck Show 2014, North America’s largest work truck event, March 5–7 at the Indi­ana Con­ven­tion Cen­ter in Indi­anapo­lis, IN.

“The work truck indus­try is evolv­ing rapidly and we are see­ing a sig­nif­i­cant increase in new prod­uct and tech­nol­ogy intro­duc­tions this year,” says Steve Carey, NTEA exec­u­tive direc­tor. “The abun­dance of new prod­ucts reflects pos­i­tively on the work truck indus­try as our exhibitors and atten­dees look to the future.”

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Tom Kon­tos Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent & Chief Econ­o­mist ADESA Ana­lyt­i­cal Ser­vices reports that whole­sale used vehi­cle prices returned to their soft­en­ing pat­tern in Decem­ber after a one-month hia­tus. The trend was seen through­out the year except for the begin­ning of 2013 from lin­ger­ing sup­ply short­ages fol­low­ing Super­storm Sandy; later in the year, strong retail used vehi­cle demand played a part.

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Euro­pean fleet man­age­ment spe­cial­ist, Fleet Logis­tics Inter­na­tional, is launch­ing a new supplier-backed ini­tia­tive for the first four months of 2014, tar­get­ing small to medium sized fleets with a highly cost-effective, stand-alone fleet man­age­ment solu­tion to rad­i­cally improve their fleet efficiency.

Fleet Logis­tics Chief Com­mer­cial Offi­cer, Vinzenz Pflanz says, “We do not believe that there are appro­pri­ate fleet man­age­ment solu­tions gen­er­ally avail­able to meet the needs of small to medium sized fleet oper­a­tors. By using the new Fleet Logis­tics’ prod­uct, the small to medium sized client will have a set of stan­dard­ized poli­cies and tools to cre­ate clear auto­mated process flows, cost trans­parency and pro­fes­sional invoice control.”

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