Photo: Flete CEO Drake Bauer
By Fleet Management Weekly Staff
October 30, 2024
Fleet management has evolved at a staggering rate over the years. Whereas managers used to keep track of assets and maintenance schedules with nothing but a spreadsheet and a clipboard, technology has helped bring the process into the 21st century. But while much of fleet management is done online, fleets often rely on a patchwork of disparate systems prone to inaccuracies and miscommunication.
Flete is here to change that, according to Drake Bauer, CEO, and co-founder of Flete, by delivering a powerful, personalized interface that connects all management functions into one cohesive system. Drake sat down with Fleet Management Weekly to talk about how Flete is using innovative technology to upend the fleet industry:
Tell me what Flete does.
Our focus at Flete is to improve fleet managers’ workflows, from automating daily reports to normalizing spending by VMRS code. We even provide a better interface for rental or lease inspections. We’ve serviced many fleets nationwide in industries like trucking, car-share rentals, and service businesses.
How did Flete come about? Why did you decide it was necessary?
My two co-founders and I all come from an automotive background. You could say we left the womb with a Hot Wheel in hand. So, we’re passionate about cars, and our careers have each been at that intersection of automotive, transportation, and emerging technology. We come from a background of startups innovating in the mobility technology space, so meeting the right people who want to pursue an idea was a bit of good timing.
When I look back at the differences between today and a few years ago, I see many vehicles with accessible telematics data. Cars are more like smartphones with four wheels. With the advent of AI, you now have more access to data in more efficient ways. You can use that data and process it to start thinking about our industry’s problems in a new way. That was the birthplace of us wanting to start working on an idea together.
It all came together after spending a few weeks in the office of a rental car company based in Phoenix. They had a small EV fleet with just under a hundred assets. We lived on their office floor, learning about their problems, their disconnected platforms, the technologies they’ve used, and the ones still causing them problems. We wanted to innovate in that space, so we started Flete.
What kind of fleets do you work with? Do you have a sweet spot?
Our smallest fleet has 25 assets, and our largest fleet is just under 10,000. We range from SMB rental car companies to multinational trucking organizations. What we do for each fleet depends on them and how they operate. Instead of coming in with our elbows out and saying, “Here’s a new login; learn a new system,” we ask questions like, “What tools have you currently implemented into your stack? What gaps in your system can we identify by creating a helpful new interface or by Flete living behind the scenes?”
Then, we can connect the dots to the different tools that don’t talk to each other or don’t integrate. So, if you’re a large, established fleet, you’ve probably invested a lot of time and resources into technology to try and improve your fleet. What we can do is connect those dots for you. If you’re a small fleet just getting started and you’ve relied on spreadsheets and sticky notes, then you can use all of our interfaces. Flete can be your foray into fleet management technology.
Can you share any success stories?
A good example is EV Access, the first EV rental car fleet we started working with in Phoenix. When we met them, they had just under a hundred assets operating across eight different full-time employees. By implementing our system, we improved their service and maintenance tracking by connecting their Reservation Management System (RMS) with a claims tracking system.
We also tied in their service and maintenance processes, giving their team better automation in their workflows. As a result, they currently have 243 assets after six months and have only hired two more employees. That represents a significant increase in how many assets an employee can manage, which definitely beats their projections.
We also worked with a trucking company based in the Midwest with 14 locations spread across Iowa, Minnesota, and a handful of states on the East Coast. The company operated with a rental leasing management and a managed service department.
Unfortunately, they had a lot of disconnected tools and some outdated software that they’d been using for the last 10 years. We’ve replaced their reliance on an expensive service management system and a rental management system and consolidated that into two fleet interfaces connected with their Document Management System (DMS).
Now, they can automate email reporting to their customers and their managed owners. By the end of the year, we were able to consolidate tools and help them save just over $16,000 a year in software costs.
What do you see next for Flete? How about the industry in general?
My co-founders and I are thinkers – we have been since the beginning of the company–and I think that ethos plays a vital role in our vision for the future. We’re excited about the advancements of AI, and we want to use it meaningfully rather than just bolting it on top of an already established software solution. We want to think of it from the ground up in ways that allow fleet managers to access the relevant information they need instantly.
That allows you to start thinking of the fleet manager’s role differently. Instead of needing one at every location, perhaps one fleet manager can manage five locations remotely because they have the tools. I think that breaks the model of how a fleet manager is currently implemented in business staff breakdown.
For us, it’s about changing the model and making fleet managers almost supercharged with more power and confidence to get vehicles under their umbrella. That’s where we’re innovating. We’re excited to continue evolving our product and bringing a new world of innovation into our industry through Flete.
