The times have changed since the fleet business first came about in the 1930′s. Technology, economic whirlwinds, and customer needs are ever evolving making room for even more change. Below are 7 milestones have dramatically changed the nature of fleet, and have ultimately impacted the way business is done in the fleet world.
1. Higher Content Fleet Vehicles: In the early days of fleets, companies had a choice of three models: Ford, Chevrolet, or Plymouth. The typical fleet car was the standard model with minimal equipment. The biggest selector deliberations were over the economies of installing a radio or adding air conditioning for vehicles located below the Mason-Dixon Line. The “Plain Jane” fleet car became a historical footnote as OEMs bundled options into packages, allowed free-flow option ordering, and proved that higher-content vehicles sold better in the resale market.
2. Creation of the Open-End Lease: Early lessors offering full maintenance leases were R.A. Company, established by David, Harry, and Nathan Robinson, and Four Wheels, founded by Zollie Frank and Armund Schoen in 1938. Changing conditions in the 1950s led to the development of open-end or finance leasing, which PHH offered in 1951. Fleets wanted the ability to replace units after a 12-month period with off-balance sheet reporting. In 1981, the Swift Dodge vs. IRS court decision legitimized the use of the TRAC clause in an open-end lease.
3. Factory Ordering: Before the advent of OEM fleet departments, companies purchased vehicles from individual dealers. Use of dealer ordering codes by nondealers, such as fleet lessors, allowed factory-direct orders. Another factory innovation was the introduction of fleet previews to provide new-model specifications to facilitate vehicle replacement planning.
4. Drop-Ship/Courtesy Deliveries: In the late 1940s, the concept of volume drop-shipping fleet vehicles was developed. At that time, PHH factory-ordered vehicles delivered to drivers by local dealers. Wheels and McCullagh (acquired by GE) started delivering cars from regional dealers directly to drivers. Ultimately, it became an accepted industry practice to pay a courtesy delivery fee to non-ordering dealers to deliver and prep vehicles.
5. Creation of Fleet Management Services and National Account Program: The first recorded purchase of a fleet management program, other than leasing, was by Gibson Art in 1946. Tire company national account billing started in the early 1950s. PHH and Consolidated Service Corp. (acquired by LeasePlan) started selling tires nationally using centralized billing. Other programs such as maintenance management were not in great demand because gas was cheap and operating costs were manageable. This gradually began to change in response to market demands and new fleet services proliferated such as fuel management, accident management, and personal use reporting.
6. Repeal of the ITC: Prior to the Tax Reform Act of 1986, significant tax benefits prompted companies such as Dart & Kraft, PepsiCo, and Xerox to acquire existing fleet leasing companies. However, as a result of the repeal of the Investment Tax Credit (ITC), many corporate entities sold off their fleet leasing business units. Around this time, GE entered the market as a ready buyer and initiated a series of rapid-fire acquisitions that coalesced the industry into 10 major fleet management companies.
7. Computerization: The fleet industry could not provide its breadth of services without computers. Wheels and PHH installed their first IBM computers in 1959. In the 1990s, fleet quickly shifted to Web-enabled services. Computers gave lessors the capability to evolve into full-service fleet management companies.
Reference: FleetLocate
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The Internet has clouded the decision making process for many fleet operators. Companies can appear much larger and more capable than they are because they have a great website. Doing the proper amount of investigation to understand a potential partner is very important when making a major investment in telematics or GPS tracking technology.
Read more here http://media.ilergroup.com/assets/web/Selecting_a_Telematics_Partner.pdf
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WESTLAKE, Ohio — TravelCenters of America LLC (TA) installed GPS tracking technology on its entire fleet of more than 400 RoadSquad emergency road service vehicles.
RoadSquad service trucks are equipped with certified technicians who handle a variety of roadside problems professional drivers face. After suffering a breakdown with his/her vehicle, drivers can either call RoadSquad or those with iPhone or Android smartphones can make the same call via a mobile application (app).
“Our GPS technology allows us to know exactly where to find the downed driver and provides service technicians that drive our emergency service trucks with detailed directional information to the breakdown site,” said TA President and CEO Tom O’Brien. “Our national dispatch center knows exactly where everyone is; that allows us to provide more accurate arrival time and status information to downed drivers, lowers our response times and gets our customers back in business faster.”
The retailer invested significant capital in the new system, which also provides “critical RoadSquad fleet maintenance, operation and driver performance data,” O’Brien added in a company news release.
TravelCenters of America operates travel centers and convenience stores in 41 states under the TA and Petro Stopping Centers brands.
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TUCSON, AZ – Pima County, Ariz., is in the process of adding GPS systems to 1,400 of its vehicles. Government Fleet spoke with the County’s Fleet Manager Frank Samaniego and Risk Manager Lauren Eib about how the County went about implementing the new system, from the benefits it will provide to the challenges involved in its implementation.
Pima County has a total of 2,417 vehicle and equipment assets, with 788 passenger vehicles, 1,044 types of heavy-duty and off-road assets, and 585 trailers and miscellaneous equipment. The County is adding GPS units from GPS Fleet Solutions to 1,400 assets, which is the number of vehicles on the road at any one time.
“They’re being installed,” said Eib. “We have 300 that have been done so far. We just finished our pilot project and are getting it started. One of the things we did, and it was important to me, was to make sure the system was accurate. Anybody who had a violation, for example speed, I wanted to be able to tell them.”
The County tested the system thoroughly before deciding to go with the specific vendor.
“During the RFP process, we had the GPS installed in risk management’s cars and my people drove them around,” Eib said. “We monitored them for a day with a vendor there. After they were awarded the contract, we put it in risk management’s vehicles we violated the parameters for speed, and checked where people were. It’s very accurate. It’s down to almost the parking space you’re in, it’s that accurate. When we had violations of speed, there were no questions about the accuracy.”
To get the system installed Samaniego said fleet services had to put in extra time, and coordination was a challenge.
“We had to go to working OT on Saturdays to get the vehicles in,” he said. “Having 100 cars show up on the weekend is quite a challenge. Even coordinating getting employees to come in was challenging. Sometimes we would shoot for 100 and only get 75. We eventually get them all, though.”
Eib said she expects significant savings from the system, ranging from a half million up to $2 million, though beyond savings, safety is a major benefit the system provides.
“For me it’s about keeping people safe, making sure they are abiding by the speed limit, making sure they have their seatbelts on,” Eib said. “Our people go out into the desert. They will be out there by themselves. This system lets us know where they are. Those people are really happy they have GPS on their vehicles. They know that we know where they are.”
Other savings will come from the ability to regulate vehicle idling under certain conditions, for example when a vehicle is in a County yard.
The County has given access to the system to employees’ managers, which Eib said will help those managers keep a better eye on employees.
“Although my people, who monitor for safety, the departments are monitoring for the management of the vehicle and the safety of the employees,” Eib said. “It’s also to make sure people aren’t doing things they shouldn’t be doing, like going home.”
Another benefit Eib mentioned was that if the County receives complaints about mis-use of vehicles, the County now has the ability to verify the vehicle’s location. This helps protect employees from misinformed or malicious complaints.
Another benefit Samaniego mentioned is that the system will help managers with route optimization so they can cut down on the number of miles their employees are traveling. The system will also help the County streamline its maintenance operations by monitoring fleet vehicle condition more closely.
“The GPS can also report engine diagnostic codes,” Samaniego said. “Now we’re actually finding out about those check engine lights first thing in the morning. We can take a look at the code and determine when we need to do maintenance.”
Government Fleet asked about the County’s vehicle-use policy, and Eib explained that incidental stops are allowed because for many employees, their vehicle is their office. GPS will allow the County to prevent abuse of this privilege, though.
“They can stop at a 7-11 to stop to get water, get lunch, has to be within the work area,” Eib said. “They can do personal things, such as go to the bank, as long as it’s not excessive. Just because your office is your car, it doesn’t mean you can’t do the things an office worker can’t do during the day. If you go to a bank every day, we’re going to notice this.”
Overall, County employees haven’t had any problems with the GPS units, according to Eib.
“I think it’s been positive. I haven’t seen a lot of push-back,” she said. “There are people who work out in the field out in the country, and it gives them a feeling of safety. We’re not trying to be punitive; we’re just trying to keep them safe. People think their [government] entity is not going to be accepting of this. Management wanted us to implement this, and for the most part it’s been accepted and embraced.”
By Greg Basich
Copyright © 2011 Government Fleet. All Rights Reserved.
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The American Trucking Assns. urged the Obama administration “to live up to its promise to relieve the burden of unnecessary regulations” as it considers changes to the hours-of-service rules.
“Late last year, DOT’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) proposed costly changes to truck drivers’ hours-of-service rules which, if finalized, would result in reduced wages for hundreds of thousands of drivers, significant administrative and efficiency costs for trucking companies, and most importantly, billions of dollars in lost productivity,” Dave Osiecki, ATA senior vice president of policy and regulatory affairs, wrote in a letter to Cass Sunstein, administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget.
“These inefficiencies and costs would deal a serious and sustained blow to the huge ‘tangible goods’ economy that trucking supports, affecting not only shippers of freight, but ultimately consumers.”
Proposed after political pressure from outside groups, the FMCSA’s proposed rule would enact drastic changes to driver’s lifestyles and carrier operations without providing any safety benefit, Osiecki charged.
“DOT described its proposal as a means to further improve trucking’s highway safety record. Yet, FMCSA’s own regulatory impact analysis showed that the proposal’s costs outweigh any potential crash reduction benefits,” Osiecki wrote.
The current hours-of-service rules, in place since 2004, he said, have allowed for trucking to move 70% of the nation’s goods and achieve record low levels of crashes and fatalities.
“On Aug. 31, 2011, FMCSA released even more evidence demonstrating that compliance with the current HOS rules is ‘strongly correlated with crash rates.’” Osiecki wrote. “In other words, carrier compliance with the current rules is directly linked to safer trucking operations.”
Sep 9, 2011 10:25 AM, By Deborah Whistler, contributing editor
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The Supreme Court justices agreed that police use of a GP
S device violated a man’s rights but disagreed on why.
Washington (CNN) — Police erred by not obtaining an extended search warrant before attaching a tracking device to a drug suspect’s car, the Supreme Court said in a unanimous ruling Monday.
A majority of justices said that secretly placing the device and monitoring the man’s movements for several weeks constituted a government “search,” and therefore, the man’s constitutional rights were violated.
Four other justices also concluded that the search was improper but said it was because the monthlong monitoring violated the suspect’s expectation of privacy.
That difference of legal analysis may create further confusion among law enforcement over when and for how long such high-tech operations can be used, on both criminal suspects and the general public.
At issue was whether movement in a private vehicle on city streets is “public” in nature.
Growing sophistication of electronic devices to monitor the movements of suspects made this issue ripe for review, since lower courts had disagreed on when such surveillance is permissible without a warrant.
The devices send an electronic signal to a satellite, allowing real-time plotting of someone’s whereabouts. See more here
Antoine Jones was a co-owner of Levels, a Washington nightclub, when he was suspected of trafficking cocaine on the side. A joint FBI-D.C. police team covertly attached a GPS device to his Jeep outside the terms of a warrant.
A warrant had been granted, but installation of the GPS device was authorized by a judge only within 10 days and only in the District of Columbia. Agents waited until the 11th day to secretly place it on the vehicle, and they did so in neighboring Maryland. Jones was then monitored for 28 days as he drove around the area.
He was eventually tracked to a house where law enforcement officers discovered nearly 100 kilograms of the illegal narcotic, along with about $850,000 in cash. Jones was sentenced to life in prison.
The court was being asked to decide whether such covert surveillance violated the Fourth Amendment and whether in this case it should be considered a “search,” a “seizure” or both.
The justices agreed police violated Jones’ rights but disagreed on just why.
The Constitution’s Fourth Amendment says, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.”
Antonin Scalia wrote for a five-vote majority that a person’s property is legally sacred, and the government had to justify placing a GPS device on the vehicle. Scalia said the electronic age does not change a centuries-old concept.
“The government physically occupied private property for the purpose of obtaining information,” said the ruling. “We have no doubt that such a physical intrusion would have been considered a ‘search’ within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment when it was adopted.”
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor agreed with the conclusions.
But a group of four justices led by Samuel Alito concluded that the majority’s reasoning was “artificial” and did not address larger legal concerns of searches in the digital age, including GPS. He said the court should have used this case to clarify the limits of police monitoring of wireless personal communication devices like mobile phones and Internet use.
“The availability and use of these and other devices will continue to shape the average person’s expectations about the privacy of his or her daily movements,” Alito wrote. “In circumstances involving dramatic technological change, the best solution to privacy concerns may be legislative.”
But the U.S. Congress and most states have not kept up with the times, Alito said, leaving courts to sort out what level of privacy a citizen can expect.
He said that in this case, four weeks of tracking was more than enough to justify police getting a search warrant.
Alito was backed by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan.
The justices have another pending case they may decide to tackle, from an Oregon inmate who faced similar circumstances. Police there had attached a GPS device to Juan Pineda-Moreno’s car while it was parked on his property. Officers then tracked him to a remote marijuana field he was cultivating. He was convicted and sentenced to more than four years behind bars.
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Unlike in the Jones case, a federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled that this was not a “search,” so no warrant was required to place the device on Pineda-Moreno’s Jeep Cherokee. His conviction was upheld.
The justices have not taken any action on the Oregon appeal, perhaps waiting to resolve the issue with Jones’ appeal from Washington.
The current case is U.S. v. Jones (10-1259).
By Bill Mears, CNN Supreme Court Producer
updated 12:43 PM EST, Mon January 23, 2012
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Representatives from the top GPS firms say that they’re unconcerned about the future of the GPS satellite constellation after a GAO report this month questioned its long-term viability.
In testimony delivered May 9, the General Accounting Office claimed that GPS services could be threatened by the cost overruns and delays in launching new satellites. The U.S. government plans to spend more than $5.8 billion over the next 5 years in the GPS satellites and ground control segments, all free to U.S. companies and users.
“It is uncertain whether the Air Force will be able to acquire new satellites in time to maintain current GPS service without interruption,” the GAO reported. “If not, some military operations and some civilian users could be adversely affected.”
The current IIF satellite program has overrun its original cost estimate by about $870 million and the launch of its first satellite has been delayed three years to November 2009, the GAO said; the agency also called the deployment schedule for the followon GPS IIIA satellites “optimistic”.
The GAO recommended that the Secretary of Defense appoint a single authority to oversee the development of GPS, including space, ground control, and user equipment assets, which the DOD agreed to do.
Some in the industry questioned whether the GAO was doing anything more than providing a political kick in the pants to push further development. The GAO places the probability of keeping a full, 24-satellite constellation operating as low as 80 percent by year 2011, necessary to provide coverage. Thirty-one satellites are in orbit now, the GAO said.
“We would agree with the notion that the GAO is admonishing the various government entities to work together so that… GPS service remains uninterrupted,” Ted Gartner, a spokesman for Garmin, said in a statement. “There’s no reason to fear that there will be a significant outage or service interruption.”
Only three satellites are needed to provide an accurate fix, GPS device representatives said, and high-sensitivity receivers are included in a majority of devices. This could help counteract any loss of accuracy if satellites fail, they said.
Representatives for GPS device makers Garmin and TomTom said Wednesday that they’re unconcerned about the future of the GPS satellite constellation. While the GPS device industry doesn’t have a direct say in the future of satellite deployments, too many critical industries, such as package delivery, trucking, and first responders have begun dependent on GPS as a source of information, they said.
“GPS is and remains an excellent technology for all who use it,” said Tom Murray, vice president of market development for TomTom. “We are not concerned about this changing and there is no reason to believe it will. Quite the contrary, the U.S. government has pledged full support for GPS since 2000.
“It is a good thing that organizations are appointed to monitor the development of GPS and it is a good thing that the U.S. government is looking ahead to ensure GPS continues to deliver the great quality it has to so many people,” Murray added.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2347447,00.asp
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