Learning from the Past

If I could tell my younger self one thing it would be, “don’t get that bowl haircut, you’ll regret the school pictures.” OK, in reality I’d like to tell myself a lot of things — wear more sunscreen, learn better saving habits, eat more green vegetables, the list goes on.

Thankfully, we can learn from our mistakes or poor judgments and make better choices in the future.

In the fleet world, we also have a way to learn where improvements can be made and how vehicles can run more efficiently. We do this through telematics. Fleets track everything from vehicle speed to maintenance updates to unnecessary idling. And that is just scratching the surface. This technology has made it so that we can monitor vehicles —  and their drivers — like never before. It’s become a powerful tool to help fleets have a clearer understanding of good, and bad, patterns, as well as help plan for the future as vehicles begin to age out. Breaking down all these analytics can become a full-time job.

And while it’s exciting to think of the information at our fingertips, it’s also somewhat overwhelming. Those in fleet management have more information than ever to sift through. And in a time when it seems like you can find new fleet news (hopefully on Government Fleet!) every morning, that extra information to pore over probably feels more like a chore some days.

So how do you manage all this extra info? The truth is, I don’t know. But before you walk away and wonder why you even started reading this, stay with me a few seconds longer. Because even though I may not have the answers, it’s the people in our stories who do. As I’ve become more acquainted with this industry, I’ve come to realize that members of this community have rolled with the punches and have found ways to move their fleets into the future in a resilient way. Our November/December issue has great advice from people in every area of fleet including telematics, aging vehicles, productivity, and more. Our goal is to bring this kind of expert advice and insight into one place so that tackling things like telematics seems less daunting and more exciting. We want to be able to look at what’s ahead and know that, while there are many uncertainties, we can still rely on the fleet community to make that journey together. So while something like a bad haircut may be forever cemented in the past, not staying up to date with fleet changes doesn’t have to be.

One final note: if you’re not finding what you need in our magazine, on the website, or on FleetShare (a great source for last-minute questions), send us a note! We want to make sure the content we’re putting out helps, informs, or educates you in some way or another.