Chris Brown's perspective on fleets, mobility, and the business of cars.
For the 2021-MY, Ford made ergonomic enhancements for drivers and added an available Parcel Delivery Package. This follows a major refresh in 2020, which added a Crew version, a new standard engine, standard active safety technologies, and embedded telematics to the Transit van family.
Vocational and business fleet drivers don’t get the attention that truckers do. Yet they too are on the front lines, and their jobs often bring them into uncontrolled environments every day.
As proliferation of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) increases, skilled labor, equipment, and training costs will increase as well. Fleet operators can’t mitigate these financial burdens by cutting corners on ADAS recalibration and repairs.
If an automaker can make an electric truck like the one I’m laying out here, I’m all in.
Remember compliance cars? California Air Resources Board (CARB) proposed Advanced Clean Truck rule feels like its 2012 rule dictating zero-emission passenger cars. Only this time, fleets are involved.
Amazon placed an order for a cargo van that doesn’t exist yet; you can now call your Tesla across the parking lot, and gas stations are becoming the filling stations of (back to) the future. Just another week in this new world of transportation.
In this new era of vehicles taking over human tasks, fleet operators need to adjust driver education, training, and policies to maximize the effectiveness of advanced driver assistance systems.
Yes, an all-electric pickup can tow 1.25 million pounds, but to deliver one with verifiable specs, at scale, and at a reasonable price point is a different equation entirely.
As we enter a new era that puts an increasing importance of the value of data and our ability to interpret it, some in fleet are asking if we’re losing sight of some basic skills to do the job.
A massive new market for fleet management will be created that doesn’t exist yet. Are you ready?
With an increasing emphasis on emissions reductions mandates, will fleet operators get caught between clean technologies on their way out and an electric future that hasn’t yet arrived?
From giant leaps in torque and towing to heavy duty truck personalization and chassis cab styling, these trends emerged from this year’s Work Truck Show in Indianapolis.
In Southern California and other parts of the world, regulators are coalescing to ban, or severely curtail, diesel vehicles. There’s a growing disconnect with the mandates to green the environment and the availability of products and technologies to get us there.
“Disengagement reports” reveal how many times a human driver had to take control of a driverless car in testing in California. A few well-publicized autonomous players lagged far behind.
An industry is forming, and it needs help with fleet. In the meantime, the fleet industry should know that these new businesses are navigating extraordinary circumstances, which is forcing them to be better fleet operators pretty darn quick.
