April 6, 2021

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Editor’s Analysis & Top Industry News

Fatal Distraction

Paul Atchley, PhD, eDriving’s brain science advisor, asks: Is Our New ‘Distanced’ Way of Life Making Drivers a Threat to Themselves? Citing some recent NSC statistics, he writes, “…the estimated deaths per 100 million miles travelled was 1.20 in 2019 and 1.49 in 2020, or a 24% increase in risk of death. In simplest terms, every mile we drive has become more likely to be one that results in a fatality.”

Turning to the monetary aspect of crashes, we note that NETS has published its updated Cost of Motor Vehicle Crashes to Employer Report and accompanying Cost of Crashes Calculator App. Be sure and mark your calendars for NETS 2021 Strength IN Numbers Annual Road Safety Conference — October 19-21.

Ed Pierce wraps up his series on account-based marketing in A Call to Action: An ABM Primer for Fleet Service Providers, Part III: Key Metrics. Ed says, “Account-based marketing moves beyond disparate lead generation, sales, customer service, and account management programs to deliver a winning strategy for the entire customer relationship journey.”

Enjoy this issue and check in with FleetManagementWeekly.com for daily updates.

Janice Sutton
Editor in Chief


VIDEO: Thoughts, Actions, Results: A Customer Driven Mindset

A Customer Driven Mindset takes you through thoughts and actions to results. You just need to embrace the opportunity to grow and to be a positive force.

VIDEO: The Adoption of EVs


 How to Prepare a Business Case for the Adoption of Electric Fleet Vehicles
 

There are some great resources out there to help you prepare a business case for the adoption of electric vehicles, and in many states a great place to start is with your energy company.


VIDEO: Smart Fuel Savings

 Fuel Savings and Dedicated Account Managers: The Shell Fleet Solutions Difference
 

Dedicated account managers, fuel savings and other discounts are just a few of the things that make Shell Fleet Solutions different.


The Fleet Spot

Webinar: The 100 Best Fleets in the Americas 2021 Announcement

Learn the winners of the 100 Best Fleets for 2021 and celebrate the hard work and accomplishments of the top fleets and their teams.

Event Date: 04/14/2021 — Times: 2:00 – 3:00 PM EDT Reserve My Spot

Hear and learn best practices from the top award-winning fleet managers that can help improve you in your operations.

The Sustainable Fleet Technology Webinar Series is offered through a collaborative partnership between the NC Clean Energy Technology Center, The 100 Best Fleets and NAFA Fleet Management Association.

Merchants Fleet Continues Major EV Commitment, Aligns with ChargePoint to Offer Infrastructure Solutions to Clients

Brings Charging and Infrastructure Solutions to US Fleet Clients, Expanding Ecosystem

Merchants Fleet announced its alignment to offer services to clients with ChargePoint, a leading electric vehicle (EV) charging network.

As automakers and large fleet operators accelerate their investments in electrification, the number of available light and medium duty electric vehicles is expected to increase, ensuring that fleets will have access to the types of vehicles they need to electrify. As the electrification movement surges forward, charging infrastructure has emerged as the all-important link that will connect all components to ensure its success.

READ MORE

NETS Launches Updated Cost of Motor Vehicle Crashes to Employers Report and Cost of Crashes Calculator App for Employers

An updated Cost of Motor Vehicle Crashes to Employers report and accompanying Cost of Crashes Calculator is now available for employers to understand the cost of crashes incurred by their occupational fleets, in addition to the on- and off-the-job costs of crashes for all their employees and their employees’ dependents.

Regardless of company size, the information in the report and calculator cost calculations can serve as helpful tools in complementing an employer’s overall road safety effort.

Download: Cost of Motor Vehicle Crashes to Employers

How ‘Zero Days to Sale’ Eliminates Remarketing Risk for Sellers

By Gary Mott, President, FLD Inc.

As a leader in vehicle remarketing for more than 40 years, FLD is proud of the many accomplishments that have helped us become a pioneer in the remarketing space.

From being an early proponent of auto auctions to remarket vehicles over three decades ago, to being the first fleet entity to offer an online vehicle condition report, there are a lot of reasons FLD is the logical choice for a remarketing partner.

Often people ask me: What are the single biggest reasons sellers should choose FLD to remarket their vehicles, and it’s not a hard question for me to answer. In fact, it’s a mantra we’ve been telling people for decades: Simply put, FLD completely eliminates remarketing risk by offering a “zero days to sale” guarantee. That means that the very same day sellers receive a quote, they can accept, and their vehicle is sold before the remarketing process even gets started.

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Fleet Marketing


By Ed Pierce, ITA Communications. Fleet

The pandemic has sped the need for fleet service providers to find more effective means of winning and keeping business in a digital business world.

Account-based marketing moves beyond disparate lead generation, sales, customer service, and account management programs to deliver a winning strategy for the entire customer relationship journey.

Part III reviews a list of metrics to ensure ABM success.

Your sales and customer-facing teams all are communicating with key account contacts with personalized, account-specific messages to key contacts. Sales, marketing and account management teams must coordinate messaging for ads, emails and content to ensure they strategically reinforce the intended theme and deliver the intended action – sales funnel progress, relationship strengthening, and so on.

READ MORE

 

Crash-Free Culture


By Paul Atchley, PhD, eDriving’s Brain Science Advisor

The COVID-19 crisis has required us to adapt in many ways. While these adaptations are too numerous to list, many of them fall under one umbrella – interacting at a distance.

If there is one word that could describe the result of the pandemic, “distanced” might be it. Pre-existing trends toward interacting in technologically mediated ways have only accelerated. Spaces where face-to-face interaction was considered mandatory or at least strongly preferred, such as in business or education, have given way to interaction via the internet.

Even if we still don’t prefer these ways of interacting, we are all certainly more comfortable with them and many of us have found ways to adapt to the new normal of distanced living.

Functionally, this means there are now more ways for us to interact at a distance, the technical infrastructure is more robust for doing so in ways that approach “normal” and it is more socially acceptable, or even preferred, to do so.

READ MORE

 

Canadian Fleets


What drivers and carriers need to know to satisfy requirements on both sides of the border

By Scott Sutarik, Vice President of Commercial Vehicle Solutions, Geotab

The global pandemic disrupted nearly every industry, including trucking — the sector that helped ensure essentials such as food, medicines and protective gear were delivered despite mandatory lockdowns. In the early months, when little was known about the virus, drivers made great personal sacrifices. But taking risks is nothing new, especially to the most experienced of drivers.

Historically, truck driving has been listed among the most dangerous occupations in the U.S. and Canada. Year after year, statistics show the necessity to improve driver safety to help reduce serious injuries and fatalities from crashes, with data as the key to understanding leading causes and finding solutions.

READ MORE


Fleet Trends & Issues

Study: California Rules Reduced Diesel Emissions, Cut Related Deaths in Half

UPI

California’s strict limits on diesel air pollution appear to have paid off. Since the limits were added in 1990, diesel exhaust-related deaths have been halved, with the largest reductions in deaths seen in lower-income communities, a new study finds.

The number of annual diesel-related cardiopulmonary deaths in California between 1990 and 2014 was half what would have occurred if the state had the same reduction in diesel emissions as the rest of the country, the researchers estimated.

“Everybody benefits from cleaner air, but we see time and again that it’s predominantly lower-income communities of color that are living and working in close proximity to sources of air pollution, like freight yards, highways and ports. When you target these sources, it’s the highly exposed communities that stand to benefit most,” said study author Dr. Megan Schwarzman, a physician and environmental health scientist at the University of California, Berkeley’s School of Public Health.

Read the article at UPI.

Subaru, Tesla Big Winners for Annual Brand Awards

The Detroit Bureau

Subaru of America Inc. received the 2021 Best Overall Brand honor – for the second consecutive year. It was one of three awards it captured as part of the Kelley Blue Book’s annual Brand Image Awards. The company also took home Most Trusted Brand and Best Performance Brand honors.

Subaru was joined by Tesla, which captured four awards, including Best Overall Luxury Brand, Best Value Luxury Brand, Most Refined Luxury Brand and Best Performance Luxury Brand. Toyota received the Best Truck Brand award.

“Brand awareness is one of the keys to success in a business as highly competitive as the auto industry,” KBB’s editors noted. “Shoppers need to know a company’s name and hold it in high enough regard to add to their shopping lists.”

Read the article at The Detroit Bureau.

Ford’s EV Sales Spiked 74% in Q1 Thanks to F-150 Hybrid, Mustang Mach-E

The Drive

According to Ford’s first-quarter sales report, 25,980 fully electric or hybrid vehicles were sold over the first three months of this year. Of those, 6,614 were Mach-Es while 7,176 were F-150 PowerBoost Hybrids. These numbers represent a 74.1 percent increase in the brand’s electrified vehicle sales.

The Mustang Mach-E is Ford’s first real crack at a fully electric mass-market SUV. Range estimates for the vehicle seem to be somewhat conservative, and the choice to call the vehicle a Mustang seems to be paying off from a marketing perspective.

The PowerBoost Hybrid F-150 has also been getting good press after it powered people’s homes during the long blackouts in Texas over the winter, with Ford even instructing dealers to loan them out to people without power.

Read the article at The Drive.

Roundabouts

IIHS

The modern roundabout is a circular intersection with design features that promote safe and efficient traffic flow. It was developed in the United Kingdom in the 1960s and now is widely used in many countries, including the United States, where its use is growing.

At traditional intersections with stop signs or traffic signals, some of the most common types of crashes are right-angle, left-turn, and head-on collisions. With roundabouts, these types of potentially serious crashes are essentially eliminated because vehicles travel in the same direction and at low speeds.

Several studies conducted by Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) and others have reported significant improvements in traffic flow following conversion of traditional intersections to roundabouts.

Read the article at IIHS.

Using Stress to Your Advantage


McKinsey 

Stress serves a natural, physiological purpose that can help us solve important problems and learn and grow from our experiences. Instead of trying to eliminate or tamp down stress, we should try to understand it and optimize it, minimizing the downsides while capturing the upsides.

Through practice, we can learn to move deliberately between an engaged state, where we’re energized, focused, creative, and productive, and a recovery state, where our brain processes events, learns, and recuperates. Locating and describing your stress is a process of discovery, and the more you learn the better you will harness your own stress response.

Likewise, our methods of recovery are also unique—riding a bike, for instance, versus reading a book. To reach optimal stress, we need to be conscious of our stress; in neurological terms, it’s the first step toward lasting behavior change.

Read the article at McKinsey.

 

The Era of the EV?


Car and Driver

Officially known as the American Jobs Plan, President Biden’s plan includes $174 billion to promote electric vehicles and EV charging stations, $80 billion for public transit, and another $80 billion for railroads.

Electric vehicles will benefit the most thanks to $174 billion in spending, including incentives to buy EVs and support to get more EV chargers installed across the country: 500,000 of them by 2030. The plan does not set an end date on when gas vehicles will be sold in the U.S.

The reason for the bill’s focus on EVs is not exactly secret: Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg told NPR this week that the administration believes “time is running out” to confront climate change, and this bill is one way the federal government is approaching the challenge.

Read the article at Car and Driver.

 

The IARA Conference


By Ed Pierce, Contributing Editor

The recently completed 2021 IARA Virtual Conference featured remarketing’s best and brightest from IARA (International Automotive Remarketers Alliance, the IAG (Independent Auction Group), the NAAA (National Auto Auction Association) and other leading organizations.

The consignors session, called “Consignors Rising to Change,” provided viewers with an extended opportunity to ask pertinent questions and get expert answers from high-caliber executives, including moderator Tammy Swofford, National Sales and Marketing Director, America’s Auto Auction, and panelists Larry Knapp, Director of Remarketing for Donlen Leasing; Steve Kapusta, Senior Vice President of Remarketing Services at Ally; Mark Lindenmuth, Asset Manager, Caprock Auto Remarketing; and Mona Spoon, Senior Territory Manager, Emkay.

Here are some of the panelists’ answers to some of the critical questions…

READ MORE





Fleet Management Resources

 

AFLA
The Automotive Fleet & Leasing Association. Advancing corporate fleet worldwide.

eDriving
eDriving partners with its clients to engage with drivers and their managers to create a culture that supports lasting behavioral change to reduce collisions, injuries, license violations as well as a fleet’s total cost of ownership.

SuperVision
SuperVision is a fleet driver management solution for MVR & license monitoring, fleet management, fleet safety oversight and driver performance and retention.

The CEI Group Inc.
CEI is North America’s largest provider of fully integrated fleet accident management, driver safety and risk management services.

NAFA Fleet Management Association
NAFA is the association for the diverse vehicle fleet management profession regardless of organizational type, geographic location, or fleet composition.

WEX
WEX fuel cards and fleet management solutions give you powerful tools to reduce spending — for any business, any fleet, any size.

Driving Dynamics
Driving Dynamics was established to help corporate fleet drivers develop expert, safe driving skills using proven, advanced driving techniques.

PARS
PARS’ mission is to provide you with high-quality service at competitive prices for all of your transportation needs.

Wheels, Inc.
First in fleet for 80 years. Wheels helps you build tomorrow’s fleet today.




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