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Infusion of Capital to Accelerate Merchants Goal of Bringing Disruptive Change to Commercial Vehicle Management Merchants Fleet Release April 21, 2020 — Merchants Fleet today announced the company has secured $50 million in growth financing from Bain Capital Credit. The financing will enable Merchants Fleet to further accelerate its growth trajectory and mission of bringing disruptive change to the fleet management industry, which impacts over 3.2 million commercial cars and trucks. “The fourth industrial revolution is pushing forward, being driven by societal and consumer shifts, and the fleet industry will see both evolutionary and revolutionary change,” said Brendan P. Keegan, CEO of Merchants Fleet. READ MORE
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By Mike Sheldrick, Senior Editor With nearly 300,000 vehicles in its worldwide fleet, Sixt is one of the largest car rental companies in the world. Presently, thousands of those are idle because of COVID-19. As part of a program to contribute to efforts to remediate the crisis, Sixt is providing rental cars, at cost, to support the safe movement of key workers to and from the workplace in the U.S. and Europe. We recently spoke with Stuart Donnelly, Sixt’s Global Sales Director, about the company’s program: READ MORE
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Cox Automotive Declines in Manheim Market Report (MMR) prices accelerated over the last four weeks, with the first two weeks of April seeing a decline of 4.8% in the Three-Year-Old Index. Wholesale used vehicle prices (on a mix-, mileage-, and seasonally adjusted basis) decreased 11.8% comparing the first 15 days of April to the month of March. The path forward depends on the status of the pandemic and the economic response, neither of which is certain. While the decline in wholesale used vehicle prices so far in April is historic, retail prices are holding steady. When the Manheim Index fell 10.5% over two months in the fall of 2008, the horizon looked bleak. Yet vehicle values fully recovered after just seven more months. Read the article at Cox Automotive.
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The mobile maintenance and repair company brings its contactless service consumers love to fleets. What: Wrench, the mobile vehicle maintenance and repair solution that brings dealer-quality service directly to consumers across the U.S., announced it is offering its full contactless services to fleets to keep them clean and return them to the roads faster during these trying times. “Many fleets are categorized as an essential service during the COVID-19 pandemic delivering vital items across the nation to people in need, and we’re honored to support their efforts to ensure they maximize uptime and continue operating,” said Ed Petersen, CEO of Wrench. READ MORE
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Managing the Reimbursed Fleet | |
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 By Jake Ernest, Director of Sales, Motus Recessions are unforgiving. Decisions that took months of carefully planning and preparation have become pain points in a matter of weeks. The clearest example of this? The company-provided vehicle. While some businesses cannot function without a fleet of specialty vehicles – utility and waste management companies, for example, top that list – the chances are all your fleet vehicles are not similarly essential to your business. This guide will walk you through the less obvious costs of idle vehicles and alternative methods to manage them. Whether you’re leasing them or bought them outright, each vehicle in your fleet costs you money and those expenses are part of your bottom line. When they’re being used, they may be working against that expense. But in circumstances where a vehicle, or an entire fleet, isn’t being used? That’s costing you even more money without benefit. READ MORE |
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 By Mark Boada, Executive Editor It should come as no surprise that reducing expenses is the number one goal for fleets. At least that is what Donlen, one of the biggest fleet management companies in North America, found when it surveyed several hundred of its customers last year. Saving money was a goal of nearly 50 percent of them, more than double the next-most popular goal, which was managing cash flow. The trick, of course, is how to do it. For Donlen, fleets can realize the richest savings by focusing on their four largest expense categories. In descending order, Donlen identifies them as depreciation, fuel, maintenance and accidents. Together, they accounted for 89 percent of the surveyed fleets’ spending in 2019, with depreciation at 36 percent and fuel at 28 percent taking the lion’s share of those, followed by maintenance (14 percent) and accidents (11 percent). READ MORE |
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 Consumer Reports The same cameras and sensors used for advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) might also be sending information over a cellular connection you might not know your car had to a company you’ve probably never heard of. How that data is used will depend on who gets their hands on it, and could lead to massive profits. Analysts say that data collected from cars could turn into a $750 billion industry over the next decade. Privacy and data collection experts believe that insurers could use harvested data to raise rates for drivers, landlords could choose to raise rents in neighborhoods with lots of luxury cars, credit reporting firms could make inferences about people who live on streets with less lighting or more potholes, and law enforcement agencies could target pedestrians, homeless encampments, or public gatherings. Read the article at Consumer Reports. |
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