By Randy Pressgrove
April 8, 2026
For many in the automotive industry, the 1979-82 recession conjures up images of high inflation, exorbitant interest rates, laid off workers, and shuttered plants silhouetted against snowy, forlorn landscapes. If you are or were an OEM representative with memories of those dark, dead days, the recollections also include hopes of a solid daily rental or commercial leasing deal with a going fleet concern to keep an assembly line going or to revive a closed plant. Having helped win a state police car bid for Chrysler in 1980 for several hundred St. Regis Louisiana police package vehicles, the relief was palpable!
Randy Pressgrove, Author and Auto Industry Veteran
Fast forward forty-five years. The fleet-dealer-manufacturer dynamic has changed dramatically. Manufacturers have grown from looking at fleet as a means for quick plant fill and satisfying a sales plan when retail slips, to embracing fleet as a cherished business partner. The OEMs have realized that far from being necessary evils, the professional fleet organizations and the solid professionals they have developed and promoted over the years can drive brand awareness and equity just as well or better than they can help fill an order bank.
Accordingly, the manufacturers have moved their fleet contact and administrative personnel away from their long-traditional role as adjuncts to sales operations into separate fully functioning stand-alone departments, aggressively and cooperatively working with the professionals in fleet companies; in some cases the staffers in the manufacturers’ fleet departments have previous long-standing relationships with members of NAFA, AFLA, or established leasing companies. Many of these seasoned professionals started at retail at the dealer level and have a leg up on the sales process.
Similarly, the tough, smart dealers that survived the oil recession of 1979-82, the dot-com bubble crisis years later, the Great Recession of 2008, and the coronavirus epidemic have come to recognize how vital a role fleet sales are to the viability of a strong dealership appropriately staffed to work with both the fleet companies and the fleet arm of the manufacturers. Long gone are the days when a dealer or general manager relegated the dealership’s fleet representative to an ancillary role in the store’s sales operations.
Today’s professional in a modern fleet-minded dealer organization is much more likely to have come from a daily rental company, a top leasing organization, one of the major auctions, or one of the major vendors supplying top-flight technology, logistics or administrative services that partner with major fleet accounts.
Further, many of the certified used vehicle managers on the manufacturer side have migrated to the dealer world and act as wonderful facilitators in the fleet transactions between OEMs, dealers, key fleet accounts, and auctions. Accordingly, the transformation, which is still in progress, has been a boon for manufacturers, dealers, and the fleet accounts themselves. The resultant professionalism raised the bar of efficiency, client satisfaction and profitability for everyone in the fleet-dealer-manufacturer equation.
To summarize, in the almost half-century since the industry’s biggest downturn in the late seventies, manufactures and dealers, in the process of working together and with a nudge or two from the professional fleet organizations, now understand that fleet business is good business!
Randy Pressgrove is a 47-year veteran of the automotive industry whose journey has taken him through sales, fleet, distribution and market representation assignments around the world with companies from Chrysler, Mazda, Toyota, Volkswagen, Porsche and Kia. His new book, This Car Sux!, recently released by Amplify Publishing Group, is a memoir of his career in the industry.
