By Mike Sheldrick, Senior Edi­tor, Fleet Man­age­ment Weekly

Fresh from his accept­ing the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency’s 2014 Clean Air Excel­lence Award for inno­v­a­tive pro­grams on behalf of Florida Power & Light Co., we caught up with Claude Mas­ters, CAFM, NAFA Pres­i­dent and FPL’s Man­ager of Vehi­cle Acqui­si­tion and Fuel. We found that Claude’s long­time enthu­si­asm for the poten­tial of elec­tric vehi­cles to save energy and con­tribute to our energy inde­pen­dence remains undimmed — in fact, even brighter.

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By Jon LeSage, Edi­tor, Green Auto Market

Alter­na­tive, clean trans­porta­tion appears to be gain­ing sup­port – as evi­denced last week dur­ing ACT Expo 2014 at the Long Beach, Calif., con­ven­tion cen­ter. Now in its fourth year since incep­tion, the conference’s atten­dance was up – per­haps as many as 4,000 atten­dees, mak­ing it the largest event of its type in the US and per­haps the world. ACT Expo keynote speak­ers, work­shops, ride and drive, and an expanded exhibit hall, fea­tured the lat­est in alter­na­tive fuel vehi­cle tech­nol­ogy, the reg­u­la­tory envi­ron­ment, and cost-benefit analy­sis by fleets.

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GE Cap­i­tal Fleet Ser­vices announced the results of its 19th annual fleet pas­sen­ger car main­te­nance study, which found that over­all fleet car main­te­nance costs decreased by four per­cent in 2013 as com­pared to 2012. Main­te­nance costs include unsched­uled repair ser­vices, pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance, tires and replace­ment rentals.

The study ana­lyzed actual main­te­nance expenses incurred by nearly 37,000 pas­sen­ger cars from Jan­u­ary 1 to Decem­ber 31, 2013. Research found monthly pre­ven­tive main­te­nance expenses decreased 14 per­cent in 2013 and aver­age vehi­cle main­te­nance costs decreased from $50.47 to $48.36 per vehi­cle per month.

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NAFA Pres­i­dent Claude Mas­ters mod­er­ated the OEM panel at the NAFA Insti­tute & Expo, which took place April 8–11 at the Min­neapo­lis Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. The panel dis­cus­sion included fleet rep­re­sen­ta­tives from truck and car man­u­fac­tur­ers and kicked off the sec­ond day of ses­sions at the conference.

“When we look at the com­mer­cial seg­ment, we sep­a­rate cars and util­i­ties from trucks and vans,” said Fritz Ahadi, gen­eral man­ager for com­mer­cial and gov­ern­ment fleet oper­a­tions for Ford Motor Co. “Cars and util­i­ties are steady, but there is a lot of demand for trucks and vans.”

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Tom Webb Chief Econ­o­mist Man­heim Con­sult­ing Whole­sale prices are remain­ing strong – up for fourth con­sec­u­tive month in April. The Man­heim Used Vehi­cle Value Index reached 124.9, a 4.8% increase from a year ago. While the mar­ket has been care­fully watch­ing for declin­ing used vehi­cle val­ues from surg­ing sup­ply, that time hasn’t arrived yet. Strong […]

The Chevro­let City Express was intro­duced at the Chicago auto show in Feb­ru­ary and is sched­uled to arrive at deal­er­ships this fall. The City Express gives Gen­eral Motors a vehi­cle to com­pete in a class that also includes mod­els like the Nis­san NV200 and the Ford Tran­sit Connect.

The Chevy van is essen­tially a Nis­san NV200. Both are built on a Nis­san front-wheel-drive plat­form in Cuer­navaca, Mex­ico. Both offer 122.7 cubic feet of cargo space and use a 131-horsepower 2-liter 4-cylinder engine with a con­tin­u­ously vari­able auto­matic trans­mis­sion. They even share a 5.8-inch dash­board touch screen.

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ARI has pub­lished a util­ity fleet man­age­ment case study detail­ing how suc­cess­ful sup­ply chain process improve­ments saved $378,000 for the reg­u­lated energy com­pany NiSource.

In order for NiSource to deliver nat­ural gas and elec­tric­ity to nearly four mil­lion cus­tomers, the com­pany pri­or­i­tizes processes to ensure the new vehi­cles that trans­port its skilled crews and spe­cial­ized tools are acquired on time and are road ready.

NiSource aligned each step of its acqui­si­tion process with the tools avail­able in the advanced, award-winning ARI insights® sys­tem to com­pletely auto­mate its order requests and approvals.

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Are you aware of how valu­able dri­ver reten­tion is to your busi­ness? Unfor­tu­nately, high dri­ver turnover is a com­mon chal­lenge to deal with across the fleet indus­try and can have dam­ag­ing affects to your busi­ness that you may not even real­ize. Although keep­ing a pool of new can­di­dates may seem like a viable solu­tion, hir­ing and train­ing new employ­ees takes time away from man­age­ment that could be spent more pro­duc­tively. Con­stantly hav­ing new dri­vers on the road can lead to more acci­dents, less effi­ciency, and lower cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion. To main­tain dri­ver reten­tion, uti­lize a GPS fleet track­ing plat­form, like GPS Insight, to help retain qual­ity dri­vers and keep your fleet as pro­duc­tive as pos­si­ble.  READ MORE

Merg­ers and acqui­si­tions, along with “going global”, are com­mon busi­ness and finan­cial prac­tices in today’s econ­omy, leav­ing many orga­ni­za­tions’ employ­ees to be expected to quickly pick up new skills and respon­si­bil­i­ties in a com­plex envi­ron­ment of vary­ing cul­tures and processes. NAFA’s fourth Annual Inter­na­tional Fleet Acad­emy (IFA) offers cost-saving strate­gies and valu­able lessons to help the fleet pro­fes­sional who man­ages their fleet of vehi­cles across nations and cul­tures. The con­fer­ence will be held July 14 – 16 in Orlando, Florida.

“As indus­tries con­tinue to grow beyond their bor­ders, and merge with other com­pa­nies around the globe, fleet pro­fes­sion­als can quickly find they need spe­cial­ized train­ing,” said NAFA’s Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer, Phillip E. Russo, CAE.

Russo added, “Whether you are build­ing the infra­struc­ture for a global fleet, are mov­ing from a tra­di­tional fleet back­ground to a global dynamic, or are an expe­ri­enced pro­fes­sional with a com­plex fleet that spans across numer­ous nations and cul­tures, NAFA’s Inter­na­tional Fleet Acad­emy will ben­e­fit you!”

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