Strong demand for light- and medium-duty trucks in the 2018 model-year increased order-to-delivery (OTD) times, resulting in widespread upfitter backlogs despite reduced fleet allocation availability due to competing strong retail demand for trucks.
It doesn’t matter if you have a one-truck or a 500-truck fleet, you must be compliant with DOT rules. When the GCVW is 10,001 pounds or more, a vehicle is covered under DOT regs and must display a DOT number or it will be subject to a fine if pulled over by the police.
For the past three years, everyone has been a remarketing genius. The low inventory of used vehicles in the wholesale market helped inflate resale values by about 10 percent. However, as greater volumes of used vehicles begin to enter the wholesale market, vehicle supply will start to meet buyer demand, which will put downward pressure on resale values. In many ways, the new used-vehicle market will demand returning to the basics, namely recognizing the seasonality of the used-vehicle market.
There is ongoing upward pressure on operating costs for medium-duty truck fleets. Factors impacting operating costs are volatile diesel prices, replacement tire costs, and longer service lives, which are increasing maintenance expenses due to component failures, escalating parts prices, and higher labor rates. Here are 10 strategies fleets are employing to mitigate these cost increases.
All good things eventually come to an end. So, too, will today’s abnormally high used-vehicle prices. Today's resale values are an anomaly caused by a decrease in used-vehicle inventory in the wholesale market, resulting from the extremely low sales of new vehicles from 2009-2011. You need to educate management that today’s resale values will decline. Otherwise, you run the risk of being management’s future scapegoat for declining resale values due to their misperceptions of the market.
Eighteen states and the District of Columbia have legalized medical cannabis (marijuana) or have decriminalized it. What are the fleet ramifications of drivers operating a company-provided vehicle while using medical marijuana under the care of a physician? What are the corporate liability issues if a driver with a medical marijuana prescription is involved in a preventable accident? Let's address these questions and determine what you can do to minimize your corporate liability exposure.
A one-size-fits-all approach to truck specifications is an ergonomic minefield, which could have litigious consequences. In addition, there are increased field complaints about “less-than-ergonomic” upfit decisions. Besides health issues, poor ergonomics is also a key contributor to preventable accidents. Proactively resolving ergonomic issues can have a significant impact in reducing workers’ comp costs, improving productivity, and decreasing fatigue-induced driver errors.
The recent breathtaking increase in gasoline and diesel prices gives us a reality check as to how quickly fuel can dramatically increase fleet operating expenses. With fuel prices at a near all-time high and ongoing strong resale values decreasing depreciation costs, will fuel costs overtake depreciation as the No. 1 fleet expense in 2012, as it almost did in 2006?
Every fleet manager is feeling the pressure to reduce costs. The best place to have maximum impact is to reduce overall fleet size and/or modify vehicle composition. A fleet's total cost is directly proportional to the total number of vehicles in operation, which drives all fixed and operating costs, such as fuel, replacement tire expenses, depreciation, accident repair costs, etc. If you can reduce overall fleet size, all other cost categories will decrease correspondingly.
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