Rental Car Agencies Rush to Build Back Fleets — by Buying Used Cars
The semiconductor shortage has slashed vehicle production so much that rental-car companies can’t get the new cars they need, so they have resorted to buying used vehicles at auction.
The problem started a year ago, when the pandemic decimated travel. Rental companies sold hundreds of thousands of cars, said Neil Abrams, president of Abrams Consulting Group Inc., which works in the rental industry. Then travel bounced back right when auto production was hit by a shortage of semiconductors.
The demand is sending used-car costs soaring. The Manheim Index, which measures prices at wholesale auctions, shows they’re 52% higher than they were a year ago. The car crunch is a boon for rental companies, which likely will have strong profits because they’ll rent out every car they own at much higher rates than they charged before the Covid pandemic. But consumers will take a hit if they want to rent a car for vacation.
Read the article at Autoblog.
A Call to Action: Ways to Measure Marketing Productivity
By Ed Pierce, President of ITA Communications. Fleet
I have referenced previously the Productivity Conundrum: While improved marketing effectiveness is our goal, quantifying progress is difficult given marketing’s role as an adjacency to goods and services, rather than to their production.
Still, there are some possible steps we can take to develop better measures of marketing productivity. Let’s look at two of them:
The first approach is summarized by Jagdish Sheth and Rajendra Sisodia, who state that any measure of productivity improvement for a prospective marketing initiative must include the value of the effort (both customer acquisition and retention).
The measure for acquiring customers consists of the revenue attributable to marketing actions that bring in new customers, divided by the costs of those actions, adjusted by a Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI).
Driving Dynamics’ Board Appoints Vinciguerra as its Newest Member
Driving Dynamics announced that its chief operating officer (COO) Tony Vinciguerra was unanimously named by the company’s Board of Directors to be its newest member in recognition of his contributions.
“I am pleased to welcome Tony to the Board. His efforts have helped the company triple in size in terms of revenue volume and associates. Working closely with him these past few years, it’s evident that our clients and associates have benefited from his expertise and multi-disciplined approach in supporting fleet operators achieve their performance goals.
"In addition, Tony’s subject matter expertise and leadership in fleet safety are invaluable to Driving Dynamics as we continue to grow and pursue our mission of keeping drivers safe," said Art Liggio, Driving Dynamics president and CEO and the company’s managing owner.
Katherine Vigneau Joins Matrix Consulting Group
Katherine Vigneau, MBA, CAFM has joined the Matrix Consulting Group, Ltd. to lead their fleet practice.
She will also serve as a Director of MCG Consulting Solutions, their Canadian subsidiary, to promote and coordinate their expanding presence in Canada.
She will be instrumental in fostering the growth of MCG Consulting Solutions, the Canadian subsidiary of the firm.
The timing couldn’t be better as fleet and other government functional areas rebound from the impact of COVID and look for solutions to sustain operational excellence and promote efficiency.
Interview: Agile Fleet’s Joe Poznick on Client Success
FMW Editorial Staff
In April 2021, fleet industry veteran Joe Poznick, Agile Fleet's Senior Director of Client Success, took the helm of the company’s client success group.
He succeeds V.P. of Client Success Matt Wade, who is pursuing a well-earned retirement (Wade will continue on with Agile Fleet as a Board of Directors member).
Poznick brings with him over 25 years of experience working with multi-national fleet operations with business process analysis, fleet solutions development, telematics, systems integration, as well as car-sharing and mobility.
His goal, as is the overarching goal for Agile Fleet itself, is client success. What does this look like to Poznick?
