By Bill Bishop, SVP Marketing, FLD
October 23, 2024
How do top fleet managers feel about vehicle availability?
Where do they think the US economy is headed?
And – perhaps even more importantly – what is their “gut” telling them about the overall state of fleet?
Important questions for sure. And likely the kind of topics most of us who service fleets would like clarity on. Especially at a time when our industry is changing faster than at any time in its history – by many accounts more rapidly over the last 5 years than it did in the 50 previous years. Hardly surprising considering the roadblocks we’ve all experienced the last few years – from disruption caused by FMC consolidation to challenges like carbon mandates, gyrating fuel prices and the growing pains caused by EV integration.
Given these headwinds, couldn’t we all benefit from deeper insights into what top fleet managers are thinking about our industry?
With this in mind, our team here at FLD got to thinking:
How could we develop an accurate snapshot of current fleet manager sentiment? And how could we track that sentiment from month-to-month, quarter-to-quarter, and year-to-year in an effort to better understand how fleet managers feel about the important issues facing fleet?
Knowing that our own Customer Advisory Board (CAB) is comprised of some of the industry’s top fleet managers, we realized we had a wealth of knowledge to tap into. So much so, that we decided to develop a Sentiment Index of our own – an in-depth, quarterly look at how top fleet managers feel about 7 key indicators that have an outsized effect fleet including:
- Vehicle availability
- Fuel prices
- Maintenance
- Supply chain
- The US economy
- Talent availability
- Gut (each fleet professional’s “gut” feeling about the industry)
To view the just-released FLD Q4 Sentiment Index go to www.fldinc.com/news.
To accomplish this goal, we asked members of our Customer Advisory Board – as well as some of the industry’s top fleet managers – to tell us how they were feeling about these 7 topics at the beginning of Q3 this year. Scoring was based on a 1 (not feeling confident about a topic) to 5 (feeling very confident about a topic) basis. The scores were then aggregated and averaged before being mapped out on a chart, giving us a visual representation of fleet manager sentiment for Q3.
Then, at the beginning of Q4, we remeasured and again mapped out that sentiment, giving us a look at how it had changed from Q3 to Q4. Going forward we will continue to repeat this process each quarter in an effort to map fleet manager sentiment over time.
Middling Sentiment, Wait and See Attitude
So, what have we learned now that we’ve had the opportunity to compare and contrast Q3 sentiment vs. Q4? For starters, the first Sentiment Index taken during Q3 showed that our panel of top fleet managers was mildly positive on the industry, with 5 of 7 indicators registering higher than a 3.0 score. Taken again in the second week of October, our Q4 Sentiment Index is showing a mild drop in fleet manager sentiment, with 5 of 7 indicators falling slightly from their Q3 numbers and two getting marginally better.
And while none of these key indicators showed a marked drop, follow up conversations with our CAB members signaled that several are still extremely bearish on certain aspects of the industry, with concerns around FMC’s, OEMs and upfitting currently “the most painful,” as one Fortune 500 fleet manager reported.
One other area of concern according to the Index’s Q4 numbers is the availability – or lack thereof – of talent. As is a lingering concern that the industry is woefully unprepared to adequately address fleet maintenance needs, especially for the rapidly evolving EV and alternative fuel vehicles fleets will deploy over the coming years.
One subject on which our fleet manager respondents agreed? That most of them are mildly ambivalent about the overall prospects for the industry. Something that comes through loud and clear when one considers the highest aggregate score for any one category in our Q4 Index was the 3.3 garnered by “vehicle availability” – hardly a ringing endorsement for the state of fleet.
Also reinforcing this ambivalence was that the average score for all 7 indicators in our Q4 review was 2.8, essentially right in the middle of the 1 to 5 range. As it is, only a few of the fleet pros who voted reported feeling negative about the industry. By the same token, only a few said they were decidedly “confident” about the state of fleet. Further indication of a laissez faire, wait and see attitude that has defined much of the post-Covid era.
Perhaps even more telling? When it comes to our respondent’s “gut” feeling about the state of fleet, most were simply lukewarm. This is a result they say of macro factors like the pending Presidential election and a lack of access to capital that keep many fleets “marching in place,” as one respondent put it – a common refrain and something we’ll be keeping our eye on as the industry struggles to break from its post-pandemic malaise and, hopefully, into its next golden age.
Keeping Our Finger on the Pulse of Fleet
While events of the last few years make it hard to predict where the industry is definitively headed, one thing’s for sure. Our team at FLD will continue striving to better understand the important dynamics at play in fleet. And stay committed to developing – and sharing – custom insights like our quarterly Sentiment Index, our first-of-its-kind White Metal Market Report (now in its 9th year,) and our ongoing “Frankly Speaking” series. All developed to give our valued customers the up-to-the-minute information – and actionable insights – they need to run better, smarter fleets.
Bill Bishop is SVP of Marketing for FLD Remarketing and a 35-year-plus veteran of the fleet industry. A recognized expert, Bill has developed FLD’s popular White Metal Market Report since its inception and can be reached at [email protected]. To view our just-released Q4 Sentiment Index go to www.fldinc.com/news. And to sign up to receive updates to our quarterly Sentiment Index or any of our publications, reach out to [email protected] to be added to the distribution list.