Industry icon Jim Rallo offers his thoughts on fleet management leadership and the key attributes and qualities essential to success.
Jim, tell us how your fleet career began and evolved.
Like most people in this industry I never pursued fleet management as a curriculum in college. I came across it purely by accident – there was an opportunity to interview with a company in Baltimore, Peterson, Howell and Heather, today known as PHH. The company’s business was both fascinating and interesting. Their focus was to provide services that assisted fleet managers with meeting the goals and objectives of their organizations.
I started out as a trainee at PHH, which I really wasn’t excited about. However, looking back, having gone through the process of working in every department of the organization, I learned things about the business, understood more about what they did, and developed a great appreciation of each and every job function and area of responsibility within the company. This became very important in my career. It gave me a position of credibility and understanding of the industry.
After one year, I moved from trainee to an account executive and was given responsibility for a portfolio of clients in the northeastern part of the United States. Within a few years I was promoted to regional manager for the eastern half of the country. Shortly thereafter, I became a regional vice president of client relations, then vice president of sales for the US, and subsequently senior vice president of sales and client relations for the U.S. In essence, I had responsibility nationwide for all clients and all sales functions.
After spending most of my career on the marketing side of the business, the latter years saw me in a staff role supporting the president in various ways. I helped with the expansion of PHH around the globe, developed new and creative relationships with the various auto manufacturers, both domestic and import, as well as various other projects from our president.
As part of that role, I worked with the American Automotive Leasing Association (AALA), and was called upon to give testimony at various times to various congressional subcommittees in Washington on Clean Air and EPACT. I always presented testimony and answered questions from the perspective of its impact on American business and economy.
There were a couple of very interesting times. One of those involved T. Boone Pickens. For ten years he and I had different opinions on some legislation. He strongly supported the use of natural gas for vehicles in the United States through mandates. I am a believer and supporter in natural gas, but embraced more of a free market approach where fleets and the consumer would make the choice.
One day while giving testimony, Mr. Pickens and I were asked a variety of questions. Much to my surprise, he agreed with me that incentives made more sense than mandates, pointing out that neither business nor the U.S. Government had been able to comply with the mandate.
This was an important congressional hearing on this matter; one that I was both fortunate and humble to be a part of. It was a great accomplishment for AALA, business and the country.
How have you seen NAFA and AFLA advance over the years? What has been the biggest impact of these organizations?
Each organization brings a different perspective to the industry. Anyone associated with the fleet industry needs to be associated and literally belong to both organizations.
NAFA is a huge organization and has done a tremendous amount for the industry, including taking a position on legislative issues since its founding back in the 50’s. NAFA does a great job in educating individuals new to the industry. They have a certification program that I encouraged people to take. It has chapters across the country, an annual conference and regional seminars, which are designed to educate its members.
AFLA provides an outstanding education forum for fleet professionals that have a few years of experience. AFLA can offer you a tremendous amount. To me, AFLA has the best conference in the industry for networking, interfacing with major supplier/partners and other fleet professionals and being in the forefront of identifying trends. I feel it is important to belong to both organizations.
What are some of your attributes that have helped you succeed? Who were some of your notable influences?
Being open to learning new things and enjoying doing new things. Even if I did something for a long time I continued to look for better and different ways to improve upon the responsibilities and tasks assigned.
People have certainly influenced me over the years. I have had a couple of mentors in my life that I think highly of and in my opinion learned a lot from. There was one by the name of Gene Arbaugh who became president of PHH fleet operations for a number of years. Gene was a very hard working person and I learned from him that there is nothing that can substitute for hard work.
Jim Noonan, senior vice president at PHH, was another person that I have a tremendous amount of respect for. He always had new ideas and was very creative. Jim’s creativity taught me to look at things very differently and consequently we developed a lot of new processes and services at PHH; some were a first for the industry which were later adopted by other fleet management companies.
These two people were very instrumental in helping me advance my career and quite frankly helped me mature and grow into this industry. Both of those individuals love this industry just as I do. We all found it fascinating and challenging and acquired many friends along the way.
What did you look for when you hired people? What are some of the factors that you think make a successful employee?
One of the things that I look for, were people not like myself. If an organization is going to be successful, hiring people like yourself is not the best thing. You need to hire people who look at things from a different perspective. They should have different backgrounds and experiences; i.e., ethnic backgrounds, gender, geography, education and work experiences.
At PHH, we had a variety of people with different backgrounds, different experiences, and different management styles. No one was trying to clone anyone. You looked at the strengths of the person and tried to maximize the strengths and obviously minimize the weaknesses. I believe the more diverse an organization is the more successful it is going to be. Having said that, I was able to build a management team at PHH that grew sales and minimized client attrition like nothing the company had ever seen in its history.
PHH actually was one of the first organizations in our industry to introduce women to field positions. I thought it was an excellent idea because we saw a lot of women fleet managers entering the profession. And why not have women account executives? It was unheard of because when the industry first started; in many cases people actually had hands-on experience repairing a car or truck. That really is not what managing a fleet was all about. It required a completely different set of skills and knowledge. This decision was successful given the number of women in field positions today, not only at PHH but throughout the industry.
Do you have any sense of where the industry is going?
Having spent 38 plus years in this industry, I have already seen a lot. There have been ups and downs, recessions, prosperity, energy issues, legislative challenges, global issues, etc. What I have seen with fleet management companies – and they can all take pride in this – is they continue to evolve. They are successful because they meet the challenges of the times. They listen well, identify issues and trends, and are eager to hear if there is anything out there that they don’t have a solution for. Most of them, if not all, are quite willing to develop a solution whatever it might be.
I believe our industry will continue to grow. Consolidation has been going on for quite some time and will continue. If we can go back to the time of the Reagan Presidency, consolidation accelerated and managing fleet costs received a greater focus than in prior decades. Fleet management companies developed programs, services and products to help with both consolidation and growth which continues today.
I see the industry still evolving. If any of the fleet management companies today fail to watch for new trends and challenges, they may not be here. They may become part of another organization or worse, simply go away. At the moment, I don’t see any of them going away but continuing to grow and provide good services and products.
One thing is for sure, because change is constant, there will be new services and products to meet the challenges of tomorrow.
BIO
James G. Rallo
Retired, Vice President, Strategic Partnerships
PHH Arval
Jim Rallo joined PHH over 38 years ago. During his career, he has held numerous positions including Regional Manager, Regional Vice President, Senior Vice President Sales, and Senior Vice President Sales and Client Relations. More recently, Jim was Vice President of Strategic Partnerships at PHH. In this role, Jim expanded PHH’s services to Japan and Africa through affiliations and partnerships. However, his primary focus was developing and maintaining PHH’s strategic partnerships with both domestic and import vehicle manufacturers.
Jim’s many accomplishments and long-standing commitment to the fleet management profession have made him a leading industry spokesman by his business peers, competitors, and media. In the area of legislation (Clean Air, EPACT, etc.) he has been actively involved. On behalf of the fleet industry and PHH, he has testified before a number of state, congressional, and federal agencies.
Industry organizations include NAFA, where he is a current member of the Board of Governors, VP NAFA Foundation, and past Affiliate Trustee. In 1997, NAFA awarded him “Honorary Membership” based on contributions to community, industry and NAFA. At AFLA, he is a member, past President, Executive VP, VP, and has served on numerous committees. He was inducted into AFLA’s “Fleet Hall of Fame” in 2009. Lastly, Jim was a member of AALA, and led the “Industry Standards” initiative with the “Domestic 3.”