What is Fleet Management? 

Most companies that manage fleets define “fleet management” and function differently than Fleet Team. According to a Forbes article, “Fleet management is a broad term that encompasses the many actions and processes that must occur for a fleet of five or more vehicles to run on time, within budget, and at greatest efficiency...with some sort of centralized software platform.”

That definition was likely aimed at over-the-road vehicles and suggested software is the primary means to manage it. At Fleet Team, if it moves people or product, we manage it, including but not limited to: 

Forklifts, Cranes, Construction equipment, AGVs, Specialty equipment, yard and terminal tractors, railcar movers, scissor/man lifts, and personnel carriers.  

Beyond the range of equipment we manage, we occupy a niche in the marketplace that goes well beyond “some sort of software platform,” no offense to Forbes. We go beyond what software or telematics can provide and are light years ahead of national account “fleet management” programs. 

Besides being brand agnostic, our niche is ours alone because we define fleet management differently. Below are some of the core things we do differently:  

1. Partner with Servicing Dealers (and Get Rid of Total Maintenance Agreements)
2. Acquire Assets Based on Data
3. Lease with Mutuality 
4. Use Insights to Promote Accountability of All Parties 
5. Go Beyond Telematics
6. Count Soft Costs 
7. Get You Out of Mobile Equipment Management

Partner with your dealers (and Get Rid of Total Maintenance/TM&R): 

It’s a great concept – getting a fixed cost for maintenance. But as usual, the devil is in the fine print. We studied almost 2000 units, read the fine print, and it is pretty hot in there. Our study was a nearly perfect experimental design:

• 1,996 nearly identical units, specs, applications, and utilization
• 744 in total maintenance & repair (TM&R) / 1,252 in Time & Material
• Multiple brands, dealerships, and regions of the country

Results

• TM&R COSTS 80% MORE than Time and Material
• TM&R units had 50% MORE DAMAGE expense despite having 508 FEWER assets
• >99% of units were more expensive in TM&R when cared for by dealers who carried out both type of programs!

Same units, environment, utilization, customers, and vendors, but a significant spending difference! TM&R is, in fact, an insurance policy of sorts. But the client pays the premium, and the dealer gets the payout. If you want to save money, TM&R establishes a floor of what you will pay, not a ceiling. Clients bid deals, and dealers “flex” their rates to get the business. Then they have to “flex” their service codes to damage to be commercially viable. We advise our clients to opt for transparency and partnership instead. TM&R forces everyone to play catch-me-if-you-can games and Dealers appreciate being able to make an honest living. 

Use data to promote accountability: 

We use data as a means to good ends for our clients – not an end in itself. We don’t spew data at our clients and suppose our job is done. Fleet Team Insights is a product of our world-class data analytics department, and our team’s base client recommendations on those insights. We decipher data and empower everyone with it. To do that we: 

1. Audit invoices to assure contract and industry standards 
2. Assure correct coding (see damage coding issue above)
3. Ensure PM compliance
4. Mine data to find repetitive repairs
5. Meet Vendors in Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) efforts
6. Designing dashboards for clients that integrate cost and performance data
7. Deploy mobile equipment experts, armed with data to help CQI of all parties

Transparency is good for all parties who embrace accountability. Accountability and relentless pursuit of continuous improvement leads to higher standards of care and new possibilities for savings. 

Accountability stat: Just over 25% of quoted work required revision last year because of being overpriced, or all-together unnecessary.

Acquire assets based on data: 

Plus, or Minus 10%. That is the standard delta between what assets our clients think they have and how many we find upon audit. Sometimes 10% are missing, and other times there are a lot of legacy and rental assets. Assuming good intentions of all parties makes everyone sleep well at night, but nobody can manage the invisible. Our job is to put expert eyes on them, catalog them, assess if they are assets or liabilities, and recommend an action plan to you and your facility managers. 

What you end up with is a plan that often tells you what others won’t: 

• How many units should you not acquire
• What specifications are needed for the job v. which one’s salespeople like to sell
• The different brand options, costs, and the best dealer-partners in the area for managing total cost of ownership.
• Lease v. Buy v. Rent (without allegiance to a brand) 

Once you know what you have, how much you use it, and in what environment, we can consult about leasing, buying, or renting the right-spec’d replacements. We will also buy or broker your excess equipment. Doing this with data, not sales quotas, defines this function differently than a national account fleet management (i.e., sales) team.  

Acquisition stat: doing only an audit, we saved a client over $700,000 on a $1.5m capital budget by showing them what did not need replaced. The national account sales team was ready to sell it all.

Leasing with mutuality: 

We have a lot of good leasing partners in the industry, and they provide a means for our clients to access needed equipment and manage cash on hand. But there are a few things limiting leasing companies that do not restrict Fleet Team in our Two-Party Lease: 

1. Data-Driven Lease Terms – The lease is only as good as the data on which it is based. Leasing companies write leases based on what dealers and sites tell them (utilization, environment, etc.).
2. Real Residuals and Realistic Return Provisions – if you overvalue the asset at the end of the term due to inaccurate information in #1, get ready for return fees!  
3. Changes mid-term – Business levels change. Leasing companies aren’t built to help monitor utilization and flex terms & payments along the life cycle of your equipment. We are. 
4. “Don’t Lease That” – said no leasing company. Ever.  

Mutuality stat: less than 1% of Fleet Team leased vehicles have costs at lease-end.

Go beyond telematics:

Like the fancy exercise bikes gathering dust in millions of American households, telematic devices provide excellent tools for a noble purpose. Many of our clients have spent precious capital on replacing thousand-line spreadsheets with black boxes hoping that would fill the fleet management vacuum. 

Once in place, many find pencil-whipped pre-shift checklists, impact data without no system of accountability to improve safety, and a bunch of data they don’t have time to wade through. 

So, they rely on their dealer to decipher. Guess what? All that data says you need to buy more...from your dealer. Who would have thought?!

We aren’t anti-telematics. We believe in data as it informs everything we do. We think you shouldn’t have to wade through data or rely on vested parties to decipher it. There are some great reasons to seek telematic data; we advise our clients when (and when not to) acquire these tools. Regardless, it is our job to make data make sense - Objectively toward our client’s best interests. Stat:  fleet team’s insights costs less than half of standard telematics, you don’t need Wi-Fi, and with fleet team you have a partner in finding solutions!

Count soft costs: 

How many people in your organization are tasked with managing mobile equipment? Vendors? Invoices? Ordering? Leases? Whose job is it to develop a corporate-wide program? Decipher data? Who uses the data to improve the system constantly? What if you could re-allocate those people to your primary mission and improve the system? You can because we do all those things for you.

Other “fleet management” companies will uncritically sell you everything you want, displace good OEM partners, strap a black box on your equipment and delegate the data analysis to you with a spreadsheet and a smile. At Fleet Team, we are redefining fleet management. We use data and expert consultants to engage you, the equipment servicing network, and OEMs in a partnership where we empower all members to be aligned. That partnership should get you out of the mobile equipment management business and back into your core business!

Contact us today so we can redefine your fleet management program! 

Call us: +1 614- 699-2500

Visit our website: https://fleet-team.com/contact/