Fleet Management Advice via CFO Connect
I was CFO for the #2 and then #1 Fleet management company in North America and I still consult to startups (mostly EV’s) in the space, so I think I can help.
The answer about fleet management adoption is unfortunately, it depends. Items like company locations, vehicle location, type of vehicle, upfitting, insurance or self insurance, is the business measured on EBITDA or some other measure, cash flow; tax status of the business; how it’s managed today, open end or closed end leases; etc. It honestly is a minimum one hour conversation to understand the components, at a high level, that will allow for an informed decision. Please let your contact know I’m happy to sign an NDA if they’d like and set up a call with them. Happy to provide a few hours of calls at no charge, I’m a big believer in networking and paying it forward.
Brad Howatt
410.913.7399
bradleyhowatt@gmail.com
www.linkedin.com/in/bradhowatt
We use Motive Fleet tracker and it’s a great way to monitor your company vehicles.
Can’t answer when it’s beneficial to have a dedicated fleet management function as we are trying to figure that out ourselves.
Best practice we use for fuel on company vehicles is a Citgo WEX card connected to the vehicle’s license plate to avoid unauthorized charges. Use of employee owned vehicles for the business mileage is reimbursed at the IRS mileage rate in the interval that the employee submits for that reimbursement. We use the IRS rate so that we know it encompasses fuel, maintenance, insurance, etc..
On the risk/insurance side – We require drug and alcohol testing of employees that operate company vehicles, and they also have to pass a Defensive/Distracted Driver training at hire and at given intervals. We pull MVR reports and do no assign company vehicles to any with moderate issues on those in the past 3 years.
At that scale, you’re likely to benefit by moving to a 100% leased fleet with someone like Enterprise. You can integrate fuel cards with them. I’m happy to chat further – I’ve run fleets from dozens to hundreds of vehicles.
We have been happy with Enterprise Fleet Management. We switched over to them at about 30 vehicles (mix of owned and leased). They have been good partners with selling our vehicles at the right time and procuring new units during a tough market for new vehicle builds. They also have a nice dashboard that helps manage the fleet.
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Finally, we use Expensify for personal vehicle mileage reimbursement.
We use a program called Motus for our sales reps that own their vehicles. It’s a pretty easy program to implement and manage. Additionally, assuming the appropriate criteria are met, there are tax benefits to both the employee and employer utilizing this program. We used to provide an auto allowance and shifted to this for both the tracking and tax benefits. Happy to discuss live with anyone who is interested.
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Kate Stowe, is a strategic consultant with Element Fleet management (they are a spin out of the old GE Capital). She deals with all this stuff with her clients plus Element gets the best borrowing rates that they pass along to their clients. She seems like an ideal person to connect with about these fleet issues. BTW, they have a wide range of clients from trucking companies to Home Health Worker agencies all over the USA (possibly global).
Kate Stowe
Element Fleet Management
Senior Strategic Consultant
415-732-9428
kstowe@elementcorp.com