March 10, 2014
Editor's Analysis & Top Industry News


Sutton_Janice Economic Trends and Industry Legends

There are leg­endary fig­ures in the fleet indus­try and we were proud to have spent a good part of a day recently with one such gen­tle­man, Jim Chris­tiano, founder of fleet relo­ca­tion com­pany PARS. The com­pany is cel­e­brat­ing its 15th anniver­sary this year and we were intrigued to hear how this for­mer Buick fleet direc­tor built the company…with the help of a ded­i­cated staff, includ­ing his daugh­ter, Lori Ras­mussen, now CEO of the com­pany. You will find our inter­view with Jim in The Fleet Spot.

Fleet Man­age­ment Weekly attended NTEAThe Work Truck Show last week in Indi­anapo­lis. We were daz­zled by the equip­ment, ser­vices and vehi­cles on dis­play and were heart­ened to hear how con­fi­dent folks from this sec­tor of our busi­ness felt about the upward trend in our economy.

Jan­ice Sutton


driver training Driver Behavior Webinar – Register Now!

Dri­ver Train­ing for Fleets Webinar

March 25, 2014
3:00 — 4:00pm EST

This Ann Arbor Clean Cities webi­nar will focus on dri­ver train­ing for fleets. Speak­ers will dis­cuss the ben­e­fits of dri­ver train­ing, tech­nolo­gies for imple­ment­ing dri­ver train­ing, and their expe­ri­ence using dri­ver train­ing tech­nolo­gies and tech­niques. Pre­sen­ters: Laura Palombi (Clean Energy Coali­tion) and Paul Okunewitch (Green­Road)

Reg­is­ter Now!

If you have addi­tional ques­tions about the event email Mark at [email protected]


aaa Free Webinar : Building Your Light-Duty Natural Gas Fleet

March 26, 2014
10:00 AM » 11:00 AM (PST) / 1:00 PM » 2:00 PM (EST)

As busi­nesses look for ways to save on fuel costs, many are con­sid­er­ing mov­ing their light duty fleets to nat­ural gas. In light of this trend, you are invited to join West­port for a webi­nar on build­ing a light duty nat­ural gas fleet.

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claude-masters

VIDEO: Emphasis on Education at NAFA I&E

This year’s NAFA I&E in Min­neapo­lis fea­tures a cur­ricu­lum of more than 65 classes specif­i­cally devel­oped for Fleet Man­agers — with timely top­ics includ­ing Tech­nol­ogy, Cost Sav­ings, Pro­fes­sional Devel­op­ment, and Green Initiatives.

VIDEO: Changing Depreciations
bob-graham
  Setting Vehicle Depreciations Realistically
 

Don’t set depre­ci­a­tions on the great results you’ve seen for the past few years, set them real­is­ti­cally for what we’re likely to see in 2016, 2017.


Click here to watch video
VIDEO: Fleet Leadership Today
Edwards_Carolyn_LeasePlan USA
  Women in Fleet Management
 

Some­times women’s voices aren’t heard or they hes­i­tate to con­tribute when work­ing in a room full of men. Women expe­ri­enced in fleet man­age­ment have a lot to share.


Click here to read more



The Fleet Spot


Jim Christiano PARS: Celebrating 15 Years of Service to Fleets

Jim Chris­tiano founded PARS (Pro­fes­sional Auto­mo­tive Relo­ca­tion Ser­vices) 15 years ago, and built the busi­ness on the foun­da­tion of excel­lent ser­vice, tai­lored to the cus­tomers’ unique needs. Now, Christiano’s daugh­ter, Lori Ras­mussen, heads up the enter­prise, and the prin­ci­ples he estab­lished 15 years ago are very much in evi­dence today.

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John Bush John Bush Joins PARS as Southeast Regional Sales Manager

John Bush has joined PARS, Pro­fes­sional Auto­mo­tive Relo­ca­tion Ser­vices, Inc., as South­east Regional Sales Manager.

John will sup­port com­pa­nies and any orga­ni­za­tion requir­ing vehi­cle trans­porta­tion and logis­tics ser­vices in the states of Geor­gia, Florida, Alabama, Mis­sis­sippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Ten­nessee South Car­olina and North Carolina.

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Phil Russo Phil Russo Named NAFA CEO

Phillip E. Russo, CAE, has assumed the role of Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer at NAFA Fleet Man­age­ment Asso­ci­a­tion, tran­si­tion­ing from his for­mer posi­tion of Exec­u­tive Director.

“For sev­eral years, NAFA has had a very aggres­sive strate­gic plan that called for the cre­ation of many new pro­grams, as well as the expan­sion of exist­ing pro­grams, within the Asso­ci­a­tion,” explained NAFA Pres­i­dent Claude Mas­ters, CAFM. “In Jan­u­ary, NAFA announced the addi­tion and realign­ment of staffing resources to meet the Association’s needs. Now, another piece of the puz­zle is in place for NAFA, as Phil assumes duties as Chief Exec­u­tive Officer.”

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Accident Management  

Case stud­ies show­ing how truck fleets have saved time and money by out­sourc­ing their acci­dent man­age­ment activ­i­ties will be the focal point of The CEI Group’s mes­sage this week at ATA’s Tech­nol­ogy & Main­te­nance Coun­cil Exhibition.

CEI will be one of the exhibitors at 2014 Annual Meet­ing & Trans­porta­tion Tech­nol­ogy Exhi­bi­tion, hosted by the Amer­i­can Truck­ing Association’s Tech­nol­ogy and Main­te­nance Coun­cil (TMC). The gath­er­ing will be held at the Music City Cen­ter in Nashville, Ten­nessee March 10 –13.

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Fleet Telematics Solutions  

New Part­ner­ship to Lever­age OnStar Unveiled at The Work Truck Show

Tel­o­gis, Inc. scored a coup last week by win­ning a part­ner­ship with Gen­eral Motors to pro­vide fleet cus­tomers Tel­o­gis’ telem­at­ics soft­ware plat­form. As GM’s part­ner of choice, Tel­o­gis will use pro­pri­etary GM data from the carmaker’s OnStar sys­tem in the Tel­o­gis loca­tion intel­li­gence plat­form. Fleets will be able to receive infor­ma­tion about speed, vehi­cle loca­tion, odome­ter read­ings, fuel con­sump­tion, and main­te­nance requirements.

Ed Peper, vice pres­i­dent, GM Fleet and Com­mer­cial, said, “This is the next step in expand­ing our con­nected vehi­cle ser­vice offer­ing to help fleets oper­ate more effi­ciently and iden­tify cost savings.”

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Fleet Trends & Issues


ARI logo from videoARI Announces Auction of the Year Winners

ARI is pleased to announce the win­ners of the 2013 ARI Regional Auc­tions of the Year award.

Each year, ARI rec­og­nizes out­stand­ing vehi­cle auc­tions in seven regions across the United States. Auc­tions are cho­sen based on their sta­tis­ti­cal per­for­mance and supe­rior cus­tomer ser­vice in their han­dling of vehi­cles for ARI clients.

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fleet-tracking-software-report-labelsGPS Fleet Tracking: Easier to Use Than You Might Think

With the wide­spread adop­tion of GPS track­ing soft­ware among fleet-based busi­nesses, it’s increas­ingly impor­tant that these solu­tions be user-friendly. Some of the top tier GPS track­ing providers spend count­less hours devel­op­ing and test­ing lay­outs to make their plat­form as sim­ple to use a pos­si­ble. Train­ing both your­self and your team is a sim­ple task even if you don’t con­sider your­self tech-savvy. How­ever, not all GPS fleet track­ing solu­tions are geared towards ease of use, so make sure to choose a solu­tion that is focused on a pos­i­tive user expe­ri­ence. READ MORE

ford super dutyNew 2015 Ford F-Series Super Duty — More Than Great Trucks

The New 2015 Ford F-Series Super Duty strength­ens the heavy-duty pickup truck mar­ket with engine and chas­sis upgrades for 2015 that together deliver best-in-class horse­power, torque and tow­ing capacity.

“Our chas­sis peo­ple work in uni­son with our pow­er­train peo­ple to develop more than a great truck, it’s a machine engi­neered for work,” said Doug Scott, Ford Truck group mar­ket­ing man­ager. “We’re the only man­u­fac­turer that devel­ops and builds our own pow­er­trains in this class and when you com­bine that with a chas­sis that’s purpose-built for best-in-class power and torque, you can feel the result in the way it dri­ves, espe­cially when tow­ing big loads.”

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Bob GlosePlugging In to EV Repairs

CEI, an acci­dent and risk man­age­ment com­pany for com­mer­cial, truck and gov­ern­ment fleets, han­dled its first all-electric acci­dent claim in May 2011, accord­ing to Robert Glose, CEI’s direc­tor of oper­a­tions. As of the end of Feb­ru­ary this year, he said the num­ber exceeded 1,100.

“If the elec­tri­cal sys­tem isn’t involved, a repair on an all-electric vehi­cle can be just like on any other fleet vehi­cle,” Mr. Glose remarked. “But when the elec­tri­cal sys­tem is involved, it’s a dif­fer­ent mat­ter, both in terms of expense and repair time.”

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Alternative Clean Transportation  

UPS has one of the largest pri­vate alter­na­tive fuel fleets in the nation with more than 3,150 alter­na­tive fuel and advanced tech­nol­ogy vehi­cles. This includes all-electric, hybrid elec­tric, hydraulic hybrid, CNG, LNG, propane, bio­methane, and light-weight fuel-saving com­pos­ite body vehicles.

“The UPS alter­na­tive fuel strat­egy is to invest in the most envi­ron­men­tally friendly and eco­nom­i­cal energy sources,” said David Abney, UPS chief oper­at­ing offi­cer.

UPS  plans to pur­chase 1,000 propane pack­age deliv­ery trucks and install an ini­tial 50 fuel­ing sta­tions at UPS loca­tions. The invest­ment in propane vehi­cles and infra­struc­ture is approx­i­mately $70 million.

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Work Trucks  

Ford sets a new stan­dard in medium-duty com­mer­cial work trucks with the all-new Ford F-650/F-750 – the tough­est, great value and work-ready Ford medium-duty trucks ever.

The new F-650/F-750 joins America’s broad­est com­mer­cial vehi­cle lineup, deliv­er­ing an impres­sive com­bi­na­tion of commercial-grade qual­ity, capa­bil­ity and con­ve­nience that now includes segment-exclusive Ford gaso­line and diesel engines, out­stand­ing per­for­mance at an afford­able price, and com­fort­able and mod­ern interiors.

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ALG Residual Value Awards  

With used-car val­ues begin­ning to drop for the first time in years — on aver­age falling by 3.5 per­cent in Octo­ber, the largest such dip in two years accord­ing to the National Auto­mo­bile Deal­ers Asso­ci­a­tion in McLean, Va., pick­ing a new vehi­cle that holds onto its value stead­fastly is par­tic­u­larly crucial.

Gen­er­ally, the more costly the vehi­cle, the more impor­tant dif­fer­ences in pro­jected resale val­ues become, sim­ply because there’s more money at stake. Last year the aver­age new car was pre­dicted to retain about 38.2 per­cent of its orig­i­nal value after five years, mean­ing that a $50,000 model will only be worth nearly $19,100 at trade-in time. Pick a com­pa­ra­ble model that’s esti­mated to hold 5 per­cent more of its value than aver­age and it will return an extra $2,650.

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Fleet Management Resources 
AmeriFleet
Offering a nationwide vehicle delivery and relocation service; serving the corporate and commercial fleet industry.
LeasePlan
LeasePlan is the world's leading high-touch service provider for vehicle leasing and fleet management.
The CEI Group Inc.
North America's largest accident management and fleet driver safety company.
ARI
Driven fleet professionals. Driving results.
NAFA
NAFA is the association for the diverse vehicle fleet management profession regardless of organizational type, geographic location, or fleet composition.

GPS Insight
GPS Insight offers GPS tracking solutions to meet your organization's unique requirements and challenges.
PHH
Customizing global fleet management to achieve your goals.