Featured Article
Pay Me Now or Pay Me (a Lot More) Later
Some of us grew up hearing that saying from a major oil filter company, “Pay me now or pay me later,” and we also might remember the old adage, “If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.” Fleet vehicles of today are designed and manufactured significantly better than vehicles produced just 10 years ago. It is true they may require less frequent maintenance due to items such as synthetic lubricants. Unfortunately, this frequently gets interpreted by today’s fleet driver to mean no service is required. Preventative maintenance and general auto repair requirements are becoming more blended with a belief that the vehicle gets maintenance when it needs repairs, not before. This belief may be due to the lack of experienced in-house or maintenance vendor personnel who [...]
Additional Articles
Are All My Company Drivers Safe?
Every executive is familiar with the Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 rule. Your company makes 80% of its money from 20% of its customers, for example, or 80% of your profits come from 20% of your products. For fleet managers, the 80/20 rule takes on a darker meaning: If your fleet is like most fleets, about 80% of your accident and third-party claims are generated by about 20% of your drivers. The good news is that most of your drivers are safe drivers. The bad news is that a small group is causing most of your headaches. So let’s figure out how to make your 20% as safe as your 80% and reduce the frequency of claims and negligent entrustment exposure. New [...]
Why Do I Get So Many Accident Repair Supplements?
They are the bane of every fleet manager’s existence. They drive up your repair costs and throw off your budgets. No, I’m not talking about your challenged fleet drivers. I’m talking about accident repair supplements. A supplement is an addition to an estimate sent to you by the body shop after you have already authorized a vehicle repair. The most common scenario involves the discovery of further damage after the work begins. To be clear, there is nothing illegal or necessarily unethical about supplements. But they are a major source of frustration for fleet managers, particularly when you seem to receive at least one every time a vehicle goes into the shop. Let’s take a closer look at how repair supplements are generated and how [...]
Benchmarking Is Dead. Long Live the Written Guarantee!
Industry publications have featured a number of articles over the years that advise fleet managers to “benchmark” their vendors. The experts say establishing a standard for performance is the best way to hold your partners accountable and compare them with all the other vendors who are competing for your business. It’s a good argument and a time-honored process, but it is far from foolproof. If your fleet services providers aren’t willing to guarantee results and promise to compensate you for any performance that does not reach guaranteed results, they might not be as confident as they appear to be in conversation. Let’s take a closer look at how traditional benchmarking falls short and why your fleet could benefit from partnering with vendors who aren’t afraid [...]
Understanding Subrogation
Understanding the process of subrogation recovery is not as difficult as the actual performance of the task. What separates the best from the good or average collectors is understanding the actual process of subrogation and the value of the intangibles that truly affect the overall costs to the clients. Once (or if) the collector understands the value of the intangibles along with the true costs, they must be up for the challenge as well as the abuse that goes hand and hand with negotiating with an adverse party. The “world” of fleet is vastly different from the “world” of insurance. Insurers have the resources and the knowledge to circumvent their financial obligations that fleet personnel simply do not have. Any individual that works in a [...]
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Is an older car/truck ban coming to your city?
OK it is in Paris now but could L.A. NYC, Boston be next?
In an effort to curb air pollution in the French capital, the Parisian city council approved a plan authored by Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo that will restrict access by older vehicles to the city in a number of tiers. Beginning this July, trucks and buses registered before 2001 will be prohibited from entering the city between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m…