The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance’s (CVSA) International Roadcheck 2020 is set to take place September 9-11, 2020.

Historically, this event has been held the first week of June but had been postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

During this three-day period, commercial motor vehicle inspectors will be stationed throughout North America to conduct roadside inspections on commercial vehicles and truckers. This year’s focus is on “driver requirements” category of a roadside inspection; and according to the United States Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), nearly one million (944,794) driver violations were discovered last year.

In this free ebrief, you will find practical tips to prepare for the Roadcheck and help stay compliant through the year. Download now.

By RTA Fleet Management Software

Fleet operations have a responsibility to keep their vehicles safe – both to protect their drivers and others on the road.

To ensure vehicles are fit to be driven on the roadways, inspections should be performed by drivers before each route and safety deficiencies documented in a Driver Vehicle Inspection Report.

These inspections are a best practice for vehicle less than 10,000 gross vehicle weight range (GVWR). They are required by the Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration for heavy-duty vehicles exceeding 10,001 GVWR and include critical safety systems that must be checked during a roadside inspection by Motor Carrier inspector.

If your fleet operation is performing these vehicle inspections on paper forms, learn how electronic DVIR applications can benefit your fleet.

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Effects on fleets could last for years

By Mark Boada, Executive Editor

The Great Recession of 2007 lasted only 18 months, but it took another three to four years for state, county and municipal budgets to recover to pre-recession levels. Now, with the recession brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, it looks like things are going to be even worse, and fleet suffering may be greater and longer than in the last economic contraction.

But, as Steve Saltzgiver, a long-term government and corporate fleet manager, wrote here in July, there are a number of initiatives that fleets can take to soften the blows and put themselves in a better position when the economy recovers. Before recounting them, though, it’s important that fleet managers understand the basics of the current recession and how it compares to the last one.

The current recession is in only its eighth month, but in some respects it’s already the worst U.S. economic contraction since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

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MSN

Those who live where catastrophic flooding and high winds threatens your property every year, plans should be reviewed for prepping your vehicles and getting your self ready in the event of an evacuation.

All of your property (not just cars) should be photographed before the storm, as it might be needed later to assess its pre-storm condition by an insurance claims

If you’re lucky enough to have a garage that isn’t likely to collapse under its own weight (check for rotted wood, loose fasteners, etc) park your vehicle, disconnect the battery, install a cover, and remove anything from shelves/walls/ceiling that could fall on it.  Modern homes often use thin gauge metal garage doors that fail in high winds, so consider attaching braces behind them.

Read the article at MSN.

IIHS

Equipping large trucks with forward collision warning and automatic emergency braking (AEB) systems could eliminate more than 2 out of 5 crashes in which a large truck rear-ends another vehicle, a new study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety suggests.

IIHS Director of Statistical Services Eric Teoh found that tractor-trailers and other trucks weighing at least 33,000 pounds equipped with forward collision warning had 22 percent fewer crashes and trucks with AEB had 12 percent fewer crashes than those without either technology.

The study indicated that AEB and forward collision warning are both likely to have benefits beyond the reduction in crashes. Some crashes that aren’t prevented by the systems are made less severe, thanks to a reduction in impact speed.  This is true whether it’s the automated system applying the brakes or a human driver who has more time to react because of a warning.

Read the article at IIHS.

International Fleet World

Priced from £559 a month and including the car and everything else bar fuel,  Volvo has introduced a car subscription service in the UK, intended to provide an attractive alternative to leasing or outright purchase for a single monthly payment. 

Care by Volvo is said to be the most flexible service of its kind in the UK, covering more aspects of car ownership than any other comparable service currently in the UK market. Included in the price is scheduled servicing, wear-and-tear maintenance and repairs, replacement tires and roadside assistance cover.

There’s no sign-up fee and no fixed-term agreement; customers can sign up online within seconds, with car delivery to their door if they prefer.

Read the article at International Fleet World.

MSN

The U.S. used-car market in recent years has seen electric vehicles suffer from particularly high depreciation rates, but there’s at least one EV that’s done playing by the rules.

According to numbers from a July study on three-year-old cars by iSeeCars, the average depreciation of all EVs coming off leases it looked at was 52 percent. But not all EVs lose this much ground this fast.

The Tesla Model S was at 36.3 percent and the Model X lost 33.9 percent, which also beat the average depreciation for all cars (both EVs and internal-combustion vehicles) coming off three-year leases this year, which was 39.1 percent. For trucks it was 34.3 percent, and for SUVs it was 39.7 percent. Those numbers make the Model 3’s role as an outlier in iSeeCars’ report all the more eye-popping. It depreciated just 10.2 percent.

Read the article at MSN.

Forbes

The automotive ecosystem is an almost $2T marketplace which consists of a large number of integrated markets.  Beyond the automotive OEMs, these include rental companies, auto financing, auto insurance, gas stations (energy), media (radio, billboard in particular), maintenance services, public sector infrastructure, and even emergency services. 

Today, nearly every new car has core sensor, communication, and control systems embedded as a part of its core functionality with associated cellular communication systems providing data back to the OEM HQ.

A startup in Israel called Otonomo has built a platform which claims to have a strong architecture of privacy (opt-in) and federated secure access. With this platform, they can take data from automobiles, and make it available to application developers for constructing larger flows in an organized manner.

Read the article at Forbes.

By Jim Noble, Senior Vice President of Risk Engineering, eDriving

eDriving’s research confirms what other cognitive studies have shown – namely, that traditional training, whether virtual or in-person, can only do so much to change high-risk behavior behind the wheel. Does this mean coaching is ineffective?

Absolutely not. Especially when using training that is geared toward the modern adult learning styles. However, too many organizations use mobile-based training as their only behavior change tool. Personal performance guidance has been found to be the best method of reinforcing the ongoing low-risk behavior message while helping drivers develop new habits that will keep them safe while driving for work purposes.

Personal coaching conducted at the front lines is the key to reinforcing the culture-based driver safety message. Front line managers are best suited to understand the daily safety performance challenges each driver faces.

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By Ed Pierce, Fleet Industry Marketer

A significant number of marketing tactics available today and the evolving state of marketing best practices challenge marketers to find the best, ROI-driven successful Inbound marketing strategies.

Your website, content development and marketing, social-media efforts, and email-marketing campaigns — all of your digital presence — work together to become an effective lead generation and qualification source.

Let’s look at specific digital tactics that address the needs of fleet service providers who generally face long sales cycle times as prospects assess numerous stakeholder needs, research a variety of different offerings involving providers from disparate fields, and weigh the pros and cons of each.

The result: building brand awareness and trust over a long buyer decision process is important, and a singular branding message must be delivered through multiple tactics. Here are a few:

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