FridayFleet sat down with Tom Callahan, Donlen’s President and COO, to get his take on the top five challenges facing commercial fleets, as reported recently in Automotive Fleet. Tom is a fleet industry veteran and he has seen fleet managers deal with many challenges over the years.

FridayFleet: Tom, can you start with the first challenge, cost-reduction initiatives?

Tom Callahan: This is a tough one. We know from talking to our customers that this is priority number one for most of them. There are some clear ways to help cut costs: a comprehensive fuel program, protecting assets by ensuring maintenance compliance. But there are other factors to be considered. How much does driver behavior factor in? Having access to accurate reporting and analysis? That’s what we need to look at.

FF: Next up is fuel price volatility.

TC: Interesting that I just mentioned having a good fuel program as a way to look at reducing costs. Price volatility is something that is pretty much out of our control, so having the right program in place is critical. The caveat here is that you can’t wait until gas is sky high to implement a program. Incremental savings – no matter what the gas price is at the moment – can add up quickly. Again, I need to mention the importance of driver behavior in this equation. Not enough can be said about how much a driver’s actions influence the overall fuel cost of a fleet.

FF: We’ve been talking a lot about driver safety at Donlen. What’s your take?

TC: You’re right, this is something we’re really concentrating on here. It’s important to our customers and to us. Of course, the personal safety of drivers is paramount, but there are many significant costs related to accidents. There’s insurance, maintenance, and loss of productivity with downtime of both drivers and vehicles – not to mention the administrative cost to process accident-related information. Telematics and driver training can factor in hugely here. In fact, you can’t really have this conversation without first talking about training drivers. Combine that with telematics and fleets will see substantial improvement in this area.

FF: Here’s something that has been very important to Donlen for a long time: implementing green fleet initiatives.

TC: Definitely! I don’t want to sound like a commercial here, but this has been a priority for a long time at Donlen. Over the years, to complement our Strategic Consulting services, we’ve developed partnerships with several premier environmental organizations to help our customers meet their green fleet initiatives. GreenKey®, Fleets for Change™, coolfleets.com… these are all there to help develop a plan, track progress, and select vehicles. Of course, vehicle selection is important, but there are other ways to help meet this challenge. Fleet can have a very large impact in a company’s overall strategy. Benchmarking and tracking CO2 reduction is key, and something that can be reported against a company’s larger goal. We have ways to help customers do that.

FF: And finally, increasing driver productivity.

TC: Telematics. Telematics. Telematics. And driver training. Seriously though, technology is the best weapon you have to increase your fleet productivity. Many of our customers are surprised the first time they sit and look at their DriverPoint™ Telematics dashboard or receive their first scorecard. It’s almost impossible to really understand how much careful route planning combined with properly trained drivers impacts productivity until you see it for yourself. And once a fleet starts to run more efficiently with better driver productivity, cost savings, fuel reduction, and being more “green” are very welcome side effects. It will be difficult for fleets to meet this and future challenges without telematics and driver training.

FF: Any final words?

TC: What’s interesting is that these challenges, while a result of a tough economy, make good business sense – even if the economy was booming right now. So many of these are interrelated. Implement a fuel program, and reduce costs; implement telematics and driver productivity and safety follow. And reduced fuel consumption and CO2 help to meet sustainability initiatives. There are options out there to meet these challenges head on. We want to discuss particular challenges that our customers are facing, look at all the available options to help them meet their goals, and develop a solid action plan.

What fleet challenges are you facing? We would like to hear from you. We will address them in future issues of FridayFleet. > Submit your feedback here