By Ed Dubens, CEO/Founder of eDriving

The benefits of implementing a driver risk management program – reduced collisions, incidents, injuries, license violations, carbon emissions, and reduced overall cost of vehicle ownership – are generally well understood by organizations with employees driving for work purposes.

They recognize that a holistic risk management program that helps drivers identify their risky habits and change those with the help of training, coaching, and gamification, provides long-lasting and often life-saving benefits.

So, why limit these life-changing and life-saving benefits solely to those employees driving for work purposes?

Extending your driver risk management program to ALL employees AND their families makes good sense. And cents.

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By Ed Pierce, FMW Contributing Editor

Last month, I wrote about the trend in B2B sales of overcoming fewer face-to-face sales calls by using digital connectivity tools and media.

This situation has fostered an indirect B2B buying cycle that takes longer, complicates the journey, and involves multiple stakeholders.

Let’s continue looking at how smart suppliers are adapting their marketing and sales strategies to win business.

Forrester Research, in its “A Blueprint for Customer-Obsessed Enterprises,” identifies six phases of the B2B customer lifecycle.

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Fleet Management Weekly recently had the opportunity to speak with Brendan P. Keegan, Chairman, CEO & President of Merchants Fleet, to discuss the fleet management company’s exceptional growth, new ownership group, and plans for the future.

Our first question for Keegan was this: Merchants has been on quite a roll for a number of years, and now you have been acquired by Bain Capital. What does this mean for Merchants and what does it mean for your clients?

Keegan: Let’s start with where we’ve been already with Bain.

Bain came in two-and-a-half years ago as our growth capital partner. As we continued to grow, we really needed an external investor to strengthen our foundation.

Since the beginning of 2018, we’ve grown fivefold on our top line.

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New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced last week that the state intends to adopt California’s newest automotive standards, which were enacted in August, calling for all new light-duty vehicles sold in the state by 2035 to be either electric or plug-in hybrids.

As of model year 2026, 35% of new light-duty vehicle sales must be zero-emission vehicles; by 2030, 68% of sales must be zero-emission vehicles; and by 2035, 100% of sales must be zero-emission vehicles. Importantly, the requirement does not prohibit anyone from keeping or purchasing used internal combustion vehicles after 2035.

via The Detroit Bureau

According to National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB), the U.S. is seeing the highest vehicle theft numbers since 2008, with no hopes for a downward trend anytime soon.  

Nearly half a million vehicles were stolen in the first half of 2022 (as of June 30), equating to an estimated $4.5 billion dollars’ worth of vehicle losses from thefts. This represents a 25% increase over the vehicle theft total reported for the first half of the year in 2019. Additionally, NICB estimates 100,000 more vehicles will have been stolen by the end of 2022 in comparison to pre-pandemic totals.

“Since the start of the pandemic, used car prices have increased 35 to 40 percent. Criminals are exploiting these high prices as vehicle and catalytic converter thefts are crimes of opportunity. And crime is a business, and business is good,” said David Glawe, President and CEO of the National Insurance Crime Bureau.

via NICB

The trend of stealing Kias and Hyundais started in Milwaukee in December 2021 and has spread across the country because it’s incredibly easy to do so, and thieves are sharing how-to videos on social media.

The nationwide rash of thefts has gotten so bad that Hyundai has finally come up with a $170 solution.  A new anti-theft security kit Hyundai developed in partnership with Compustar is now available. The kit includes both a kill switch and an alarm.

The kit will be available at all of its 820 dealers in the U.S. and will take around two and a half hours to install. Hyundai is also working on a software fix for this issue. Vehicle owners will be expected to pay for the installation of the kit, which could cost up to $500.

via Car and Driver

Despite criticism from some investors and environmental groups, Toyota Motor CEO Akio Toyoda this past week doubled down on his strategy to continue investing in a range of electrified vehicles as opposed to competitors such as Volkswagen and General Motors, which have said they are going all-in on all-electric vehicles.

Toyota’s goal is carbon neutrality by 2050, and not just through all-electric vehicles. Some have questioned the environmental impact of EVs when factoring in raw material mining and overall vehicle production.

As part of lighthearted and comedic comments to dealers, Toyoda said he actually did a little happy dance when the automaker outsold GM last year for the first time ever in the U.S.

via CNBC

Automatic emergency braking (AEB) systems have proven to be very helpful in reducing numbers of crashes. A past IIHS study found that cars with automatic emergency braking were in 50% fewer rear-end collisions.

There are limits to these systems, and specifically in areas where collisions are fairly common. AAA has found that higher speeds and particular types of collisions need improvement.

The situations AAA tested included rear-end collisions at higher speeds than IIHS currently tests. AAA found that 60% of rear-end crashes that result in injuries happen in areas with speed limits between 30 and 45 mph. As such, it tested systems at 30 mph and 40 mph with stationary dummy vehicles.

AAA also tested with the other two most common injury-causing two-vehicle crashes that, when combined with rear-end collisions, result in 79% of injury-causing wrecks: T-bone collisions, and collisions with an oncoming car turning across traffic.

via Autoblog

By Hasnain Jetha, Senior Procurement Manager, Wheels Donlen

We’ve gone from COVID, to supply chain shortages, to rising inflation and on to the lingering effects of all of them.

It feels like too long and due to many contributing reasons, it has been too long. Sometimes it’s difficult to muster up the necessary patience needed to do our jobs in this industry, yet “patience” should be the mantra of our age.

We live in an interconnected global economy that is emerging from some complicated times and it is the impact of many elements that has brought us here. None of these things happened in a vacuum, which makes any solution that much more complex.

So, lets address some of the questions we are all asking.

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By Kevin Dennehy, Editor, Location Business News

Fleet companies are in a quandary about adding more environmentally friendly technology.

While many believe that it is a good thing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, others believe that the cost is too high, particularly with higher fuel prices and associated costs.

One company believes that technology can play a crucial role in helping fleets to mitigate the impact of higher fuel costs. In fact, Trimble Transportation says the average carrier runs 15 percent of their miles empty—without a load—and eight percent of their miles out of route.

Another company, fleet telematics giant Geotab, prioritizes proving ROI with data-driven tools to show companies what makes sense for each individualized sustainability journey, said Charlotte Argue, Geotab’s senior manager for sustainable mobility.

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