Ramel Lind­say is the Sr. VP, Pro­gram Strat­egy and Prod­uct Devel­op­ment for U.S. Bank, and is charged with over­see­ing strat­egy, prof­itabil­ity and prod­uct devel­op­ment for U.S. Bank’s fleet pro­grams, includ­ing the U.S. Bank Voy­ager Fleet Card for Class 1–6 cars and light-duty trucks as well as its Over The Road (OTR) card for Class 7–8 heavy duty trucks.

In this inter­view, Ramel talks about the sin­gle use account solu­tion U.S. Bank is launch­ing for fuel man­age­ment — how that will that work and what impact it will have on peo­ple who already have U.S. Bank Voy­ager fleet card. He also dis­cusses the future of mobile tech­nol­ogy in the fleet pay­ment space, as well as big advances in fleet card data reporting.

READ MORE

Expert Edu­ca­tional Con­tent, by Gary Hat­field from Mer­cury Associates

In the Fed­eral gov­ern­ment and many other orga­ni­za­tions, vehi­cle man­age­ment is a sub­set of prop­erty man­age­ment so it is impor­tant for prop­erty man­agers to appre­ci­ate some of the key, unique demands of fleet man­age­ment to per­form their jobs more effec­tively. This arti­cle reviews some of the basic but most sig­nif­i­cant con­cepts of vehi­cle fleet management.

What Is the Fleet?

Let’s begin by defin­ing the typ­i­cal pub­lic sec­tor “fleet.” In gen­eral, it cov­ers all motor­ized mobile equip­ment such as cars, trucks, and buses, but it also includes off-road equip­ment such as trac­tors, fork­lifts, and com­pa­ra­ble assets because all fol­low the same life-cycle, have the same basic main­te­nance require­ments, con­sume fuel, require an oper­a­tor, etc.

Read On to Learn More

Dur­ing the past decade, the auto­mo­tive indus­try emerged from one of the most chal­leng­ing peri­ods we have ever encoun­tered, and has now entered one of the most excit­ing and promis­ing times in our his­tory. Yet, even more impor­tant is our focus on the future, which will be defined by an impor­tant trend: the auto­mo­bile as part of a larger ecosystem.

This requires a change in our view of the car as an indi­vid­ual object to see­ing it as part of our broader trans­porta­tion net­work. It also requires a fun­da­men­tal change in how we think about trans­porta­tion. Cus­tomers today have extremely diverse pri­or­i­ties, and we must embrace these dif­fer­ences as we design and sell automobiles.

The facts that under­pin this trend are com­pelling. With a grow­ing global pop­u­la­tion and greater pros­per­ity, the num­ber of vehi­cles on the road could exceed two bil­lion by mid­cen­tury. Com­bine this with a con­tin­u­ing pop­u­la­tion shift toward cities, with a pro­jected 54% of the global pop­u­la­tion in cities by 2050, and it becomes clear that our cur­rent trans­porta­tion model is not sus­tain­able. Our infra­struc­ture can­not sup­port such a large vol­ume of vehi­cles with­out cre­at­ing mas­sive con­ges­tion that would have seri­ous con­se­quences for our envi­ron­ment, health, eco­nomic progress and qual­ity of life.

READ MORE

Over the years, the Ford Motor Co. has out­flanked its rivals by qui­etly con­quer­ing the world of work. In the U.S., roughly 41% of the vehi­cles used for com­mer­cial pur­poses. In addi­tion, 20% of all vehi­cles sold around the world are used com­mer­cially so stay­ing on top is a strate­gic pri­or­ity for the company.

The new Tran­sit van, which drew on the expe­ri­ence and resources of the entire Ford enter­prise through the “One Ford” plan, gives what Ford thinks is the best vehi­cle in the seg­ment. Hav­ing a vehi­cle like this is crit­i­cal to the com­pany, noted Minyang Jiang, the brand man­ager for the Tran­sit, which will have to com­pete with vehi­cles such as the Mercedes-Benz Spring, Fiat Chrysler Auto­mo­biles Pro­Mas­ter and Nissan’s new NV2500 and the Chevro­let Express.

READ MORE

Com­bined sales of com­pact and sub­com­pact SUVs have nearly dou­bled since 2008, from 10 per­cent to 18 per­cent of the U.S. mar­ket, accord­ing to AutoTrader.com. Ana­lysts pre­dict the mar­ket will grow for at least the next few years, as young, afflu­ent buy­ers are drawn to likes of the Ford Escape, Chevro­let Equinox and the even smaller Buick Encore.

“Sales of crossovers of all sorts have been grow­ing sig­nif­i­cantly in recent years, but the growth in sales of smaller crossovers and SUVs has been noth­ing short of phe­nom­e­nal,” Michelle Krebs, senior ana­lyst for AutoTrader.com, said in a state­ment. “It’s easy to see why, with the seg­ment being so ver­sa­tile to meet the needs of a wide vari­ety of car buy­ers. They can carry peo­ple, serve as a sub­sti­tute truck or haul big­ger cargo while still dri­ving like a car.”

READ MORE

GPS Fleet track­ing solu­tions can improve your Oil & Gas busi­ness oper­a­tions in many ways. You can mon­i­tor your fleet remotely any place or any­time, inte­grate with other impor­tant soft­ware used by your fleet, set the stan­dard for cor­po­rate envi­ron­men­tal respon­si­bil­ity, and more. Wouldn’t you like to have a bird’s eye view of all fleet activ­ity to know what is hap­pen­ing with your fleet at all times?

READ MORE

A gov­ern­ment fleet of 90 elec­tric vehi­cles is rolling onto Bay Area streets from San Jose to Santa Rosa, com­plet­ing a $5 mil­lion regional ini­tia­tive that took four years to get off the ground.

The plug-in sedans and vans will carry build­ing inspec­tors, health work­ers, park main­te­nance crews and other munic­i­pal employ­ees work­ing for 10 local agencies.

Alameda County is lead­ing the way with 26 new vehi­cles, dou­bling its elec­tric fleet. An addi­tional 27 battery-powered vehi­cles are being deliv­ered to Sonoma County and its water agency, 14 to San Fran­cisco and 10 to the city of Concord.

READ MORE

Google’s got a plan to take over your car and promises to make dri­ving a lot more pleas­ant. But it brings even big­ger ben­e­fits to Google.

Android Auto, revealed at the tech giant’s I/O con­fer­ence in June, will let you plug your Android phone into your car, mak­ing the screen in your dash­board a big phone inter­face, one that’s opti­mized for dri­ving. You’ll be able to find your way with Google Maps, stream music from Spo­tify, and send and receive texts while dri­ving, among other things. Of course it’s got voice con­trol so you can do all of this with­out tak­ing your hands off the wheel.

The tech­nol­ogy, which we’ll start see­ing in cars by the end of the year, will be far bet­ter than any­thing offered by automak­ers, but then, the stuff offered by automak­ers couldn’t get any worse. It will offer a seam­less tran­si­tion from using our phones to dri­ving our cars. We’ve already seen 28 automak­ers sign on, includ­ing Audi, Chevro­let, Ford, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Nis­san, Volvo, and VW.

READ MORE in Wired’s Autopia

Accord­ing to Black Book data, the aver­age price of a used vehi­cle for model years 2009–2013 over­all saw larger depre­ci­a­tion in June com­pared with the pre­vi­ous two months, sig­nal­ing typ­i­cal sum­mer­time pat­terns. Aver­age seg­ment prices saw –1.0% depre­ci­a­tion in June com­pared with May lev­els of –0.4%.

“The annual depre­ci­a­tion pat­terns typ­i­cally see larger value changes in the sec­ond half of each year, and we’ve seen this begin to pick up the pace over the last 45–60 days,” said Ricky Beggs, Edi­to­r­ial Direc­tor at Black Book. “We will keep a watch­ful eye on how gas prices and the new model year impact this pace of depre­ci­a­tion as we head through the sum­mer months.”

READ MORE to learn which seg­ments changed.

The Ford Mus­tang is cel­e­brat­ing its 50th anniver­sary this year, but where are the Pon­tiac Fire­bird, Ply­mouth Bar­racuda, or AMC Javelin? Long-lived car mod­els are a rar­ity, and the changes com­ing with the begin­ning of the 2015 model are par­tic­u­larly bumpy.

When a name­plate is dis­con­tin­ued, mul­ti­ple expla­na­tions are invoked: Its plat­form may have become obso­lete, ren­der­ing future upgrades uneco­nomic (the rea­son Ford offered when it took the orig­i­nal Tau­rus out of pro­duc­tion in 2007); Its body style may have fallen from fash­ion (such as full-size two-doors like the Chevy Monte Carlo); Or it may sim­ply not have caught on with buy­ers (like the Honda Element).

READ MORE to find out which vehi­cles will be obsolete.