How high will gas prices go in 2023? When will the supply chain return to some semblance of normalcy? And what will it take for vehicle availability to finally pick back up?
By Ted Roberts, President, FMW
These days, there are a lot of important questions circling around fleet. Which is exactly why Fleet Management Weekly has teamed up with FLD Remarketing to introduce The Fleet Poll, a bi-weekly poll that will present questions on topics where fleet professionals want deeper insights.
Interested in learning more about how and when fleets are implementing electric vehicles? Perhaps you’re looking for actionable insights on supply chain issues? Or maybe you’re interested in better understanding how fleets and ancillary service providers are dealing with vehicle and chassis shortages?
If so – or if you have a topic or question you’d like to know more about – we’d love to have you as a “guest asker” for a future fleet poll. The poll takes less than 30 seconds to answer two multiple choice questions. To keep things simple, we don’t require any additional information – you don’t even have to give your name unless you want to.
It’s an idea we think will appeal to a wide swath of the industry – kind of like checking sports scores after a busy weekend of action.
Learning more about what fleet colleagues think about hot topics is an idea that appealed to Peter Young, vehicle upfitter Ranger Design’s SVP of Business Development. He posed a two-part question about electric vehicles for our most recent poll. More specifically, he was interested in knowing what percentage of electric vehicles fleet managers and operators believe they’ll be deploying by 2025.
It’s the kind of vital information that can help companies like Ranger formulate strategy, stay better aligned with customer needs, and find new ways to navigate market forces.
“Electrification is top of mind for everyone in fleet,” said Young, who’s also the Director of Strategy for the Automotive Fleet Leasing Association (AFLA). “Learning what fleet managers think about electrification, or how many vehicles (might be deployed), is important because right now the information we have is anecdotal. Learning how many electric vehicles they (fleet managers) plan on deploying in a given period can help companies like Ranger better plan for the future.”
Gaining deeper insights into the most pressing issues facing fellow fleet managers is an idea that also appeals to Karyna Zarate, Fleet Manager at Jacobs — especially if she can learn something that can help her make better, more informed decisions.
“There are so many important topics swirling around fleet these days,” said Zarate, a decorated fleet pro with over 15 years in the business. “Having the opportunity to learn how and what my fleet manager colleagues think abut major issues can only help me do a better job, so I think the opportunity to see those insights on a regular basis can only help me do a better job.”
Jonathan Kamanns, 2022 recipient of the Edward J. Bobit Fleet Manager of the Year award, echoed several of Zarate’s sentiments. And not just when it comes to better understanding how his fleet manager colleagues are feeling about key topics. A robust fleet poll could help him gain deeper insights into other corners of the industry, as well.
“We all see how quickly this industry changes,” Kamanns said. “So, for me, the goal is to not only understand what direction I’m headed, but to also understand what direction your suppliers are going in. And something like an ongoing fleet poll can go a long way towards helping me accomplish that.”
Published bi-monthly in Fleet Management Weekly (and released on Wednesdays), the poll was the creation of FLD SVP of Sales and Marketing Bill Bishop, who found himself wondering one day what industry colleagues thought about the multitude of issues affecting fleets and fleet service providers, albeit in different ways.
“We all know fleet is getting crushed by vehicle shortages,” said Bishop. “And inflation, supply chain issues and shortages certainly continue to challenge the industry. Our hope is that by asking a variety of questions around these important subjects that we’ll better understand not just what fleet professionals think about these key issues, but hopefully also how to deal with them as well.”
If you’re interested in gaining deeper insight into a specific subject or trending topic, we’d love to hear from you. To ask our readership a question, simply email it to FMW and we’ll include it in a future poll. And don’t forget to take the poll – as well as check the results of past polls – every two weeks by going to www.fldinc.com/poll and voting your conscience!
