Terry Lang­ness is Vice Pres­i­dent, National Sales for PARS, where he is respon­si­ble for all sales activ­i­ties for the US, Canada & Puerto Rico. Terry has over 35 years fleet indus­try expe­ri­ence, and is also an AFLA Board Mem­ber (cur­rently serv­ing on the Con­fer­ence Com­mit­tee). We recently caught up with Terry at the Work Truck Show in Indi­anapo­lis, where we spoke with him about the var­i­ous ser­vices PARS has to offer beyond basic relo­ca­tion — and why their cus­tomers seem to like them so much.

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The fleet pro­fes­sion requires a strong, deci­sive voice at the table when it comes to the rela­tion­ship between fleet and leg­is­la­tion. NAFA has always been that voice for its mem­ber­ship and beyond, but at the Annual Busi­ness Meet­ing at NAFA’s Insti­tute & Expo in April, the Asso­ci­a­tion announced steps to take it even farther.

Con­ven­ing at the Min­neapo­lis Con­ven­tion Cen­ter in Min­neapo­lis, MN, NAFA Pres­i­dent Claude T. Mas­ters, CAFM, announced the for­ma­tion of NAFA’s Gov­ern­ment Affairs Com­mit­tee, a unit that will become the pre­em­i­nent voice for fleet to the halls of leg­isla­tive influence.

“NAFA rec­og­nizes the respon­si­bil­ity the Asso­ci­a­tion has for being the fleet rep­re­sen­ta­tive to law­mak­ers,” said NAFA Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer Phillip E. Russo, CAE. “We have been instru­men­tal in stat­ing with, clar­ity and pres­ence, what fleet’s posi­tion is in terms of leg­is­la­tion. With this announce­ment, we are truly stak­ing our claim.”

READ MORE and find out who is on the committee

Intro­duced in the U.S. nearly six years ago, the Tran­sit Con­nect has been a hit with small busi­nesses – cater­ers, florists, even dog groomers – who need to run errands but don’t nec­es­sar­ily have a lot of equip­ment or mer­chan­dise to carry around.

The Tran­sit replaces the aging E-Series van which has gone years with vir­tu­ally no sig­nif­i­cant updates. For the launch of Tran­sit, how­ever, Ford has pumped about $1.1 bil­lion into the Kansas City plant, where it will add 2,000 new jobs.

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Webi­nar: Idling Reduc­tion for Fleets
May 14, 2014 2:00 — 3:00 CST

Join experts from Argonne National Lab­o­ra­tory as they dis­cuss how unnec­ces­sary vehi­cle idling dam­ages not only air qual­ity but a fleet’s pub­lic image and bot­tom line.  In this webi­nar, learn about the effects of idling and the approaches — from tech­nol­ogy to human fac­tors - to reduc­ing it.  Included is an intro­duc­tion to Idle­Box, a ready-to-use elec­tronic toolkit that helps fleet man­agers imple­ment their own idling reduc­tion initiatives.

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It is impor­tant to inves­ti­gate poten­tial GPS fleet track­ing solu­tions to make sure that they meet the require­ments of your fleet size. Whether your fleet is at the enter­prise level, or if you have just a few vehi­cles, it’s impor­tant to get a solu­tion that is adapt­able to your fleet’s require­ments. With an advanced solu­tion like GPS Insight, you can access the infor­ma­tion and func­tion­al­ity that will best fit the needs of your fleet.

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Until this year, diesel engines were the ele­ment of only the heavy-duty pick­ups offered by GM, Ford and Fiat Chrysler Auto­mo­biles N.V.

Gen­eral Motors Co. said it plans to offer a diesel engine option in its forth­com­ing medium-size pickup trucks, the Chevro­let Col­orado and GMC Canyon.

GM sees an oppor­tu­nity to reach new cus­tomers with a diesel offer­ing in the medium-size trucks. The new trucks, which will go on sale later this year, will be 1,100 pounds lighter than the cur­rent Ford Motor Co. F-150 pickup — the top-selling pickup.

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To help par­ents coach teens in devel­op­ing the skills to be safe dri­vers, the Net­work of Employ­ers for Traf­fic Safety (NETS) and Lib­erty Mutual Insur­ance have joined forces to release an elec­tronic edi­tion of The Novice Driver’s Road Map: An 8-Step Guide for Par­ents (eNDRM). The new guide is avail­able now as a free down­load from the NETS website.

READ MORE and Down­load the Guide

From Small to Large Oper­a­tors: A Look Across 20,000 Ser­vice Fleets

In this Fleet­Beat Report from Fleet­mat­ics, fleet oper­a­tors can see key bench­marks directly rel­e­vant or related to their spe­cific busi­ness type, in areas such as fleet uti­liza­tion, service/delivery stop per­for­mance, ser­vice radius, fuel con­sump­tion and pay­roll. These insights can be used to iden­tify areas for fleet and cus­tomer ser­vice improvement.

Addi­tion­ally, the data in this report details how, on aver­age, fleet oper­a­tors have an oppor­tu­nity to sig­nif­i­cantly improve fleet pro­duc­tiv­ity and cost effi­ciency through the appli­ca­tion of busi­ness intelligence-driven fleet management.

Fleet­Beat also presents a unique roll-up of the broad eco­nomic and envi­ron­men­tal impact of telem­at­ics adop­tion by com­mer­cial fleets based on detailed, real world indus­try bench­mark data from Fleet­mat­ics com­bined with com­mer­cial vehi­cle data from estab­lished third party data providers.

Euro­pean fleet man­age­ment spe­cial­ist, Fleet Logis­tics Inter­na­tional, has launched a new salary sac­ri­fice car scheme in the UK, cal­cu­lated to be 10% cheaper than con­ven­tional schemes as multi-bidding is applied to every new car via a panel of fun­ders to find the most attrac­tive rate for the driver.

Thought to be the first of its kind to be struc­tured this way and to be intro­duced by a fleet man­age­ment provider rather than a leas­ing com­pany, the new scheme, called Fleet­BEN­E­FIT, is open to any sized orga­ni­za­tion, although research sug­gests that the opti­mal size is a min­i­mum of 500 employees.

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