Best of LinkedIn: Commercial Fleet Insights CW 24/ 25

00:00:00: This episode is provided by Thomas Allgaier and Frennus, based on the most relevant LinkedIn posts about commercial fleets in calendar weeks twenty-four and twenty five.

00:00:09: Frenness is a B to B market research company that supports automotive suppliers with building feature by feature competitive intelligence That shows exactly how their product stacks up against the competition.

00:00:20: you can find more info In the description.

00:00:23: So imagine your behind the wheel of a heavy duty commercial truck hauling like forty thousand pounds down the highway.

00:00:33: And a passenger car abruptly merges into your lane, just I mean mere inches from you front bumper.

00:00:38: Oh terrifying!

00:00:39: Right so you slam on the brakes You expertly maneuver the rig and manage to avoid this catastrophic multi-vehicle pile up.

00:00:47: So basically save your company a multimillion dollar liability.

00:00:50: nightmare

00:00:50: Exactly.

00:00:51: But then very next morning get called in office and written by boss

00:00:55: Wait seriously For saving life?

00:00:58: Yeah it happens every single day Because the fleet managers just, you know looking at a raw dashboard They see this massive telemetry spike that says harsh breaking event and they penalize The driver

00:01:09: because the system lacks all context

00:01:11: exactly.

00:01:13: It's the perfect example of how having an abundance of raw data can actually make us less intelligent if it isn't structured correctly.

00:01:21: Well, and that is exactly what we are getting into today.

00:01:23: We're taking a deep dive in to absolute bleeding edge of commercial fleet management

00:01:29: Pulling insights directly from operators, engineers mobility professionals who've been debating all of this on LinkedIn over the past two weeks, calendar week's twenty-four and twenty five to be exact.

00:01:41: Right because we want to cut through the PR fluff and see what is actually working on the ground.

00:01:45: Because when you look at scenarios like that harsh breaking misfire I mean The instinct in the industry right now Is just yell AI At the problem.

00:01:53: Oh totally Like people think.

00:01:54: if they just You know plug a large language model into their messy unstructured fleet data It's gonna magically provide context.

00:02:01: Yeah, but throwing probabilistic AI models at contaminated data is well it's like putting a rocket engine on a shopping cart.

00:02:09: I love that analogy

00:02:10: right?

00:02:10: It moves incredibly fast But the fundamental structure Is just going to violently fall apart.

00:02:16: The wall brand actually captured this perfectly.

00:02:18: Oh yeah!

00:02:19: The post about AI theater.

00:02:20: Exactly He warned the industry About falling for AI Theater.

00:02:24: he makes his brilliant argument about difference between probabilistic systems Like you know A chatbot guessing the next most likely word and deterministic systems?

00:02:33: Because day-to-day fleet operations, they absolutely require deterministic control.

00:02:38: Yes!

00:02:38: They run on the laws of physics strict maintenance intervals hard boundaries.

00:02:42: if you layer a sophisticated language model over a database full of fragmented or like incorrect telemetry

00:02:49: You don't get innovation...you just get really confidently delivered bad advice

00:02:54: Precisely.

00:02:54: and the operators on the ground, they don't want some mystical AI overlords anyway.

00:02:58: Right

00:02:59: Victor Gonzales from Flevo pointed that out.

00:03:01: he said fleets aren't looking for this abstract transformation.

00:03:04: They just want better visibility And you know less administrative paperwork.

00:03:09: Yeah The real utility of AI right now is in deeply unglamorous work.

00:03:13: We should be using it to flag duplicate fuel charges across thousands Of receipts

00:03:19: Or spot hidden cost patterns In maintenance logs

00:03:22: Exactly or automate the heavy lifting of emissions reporting.

00:03:26: But to even achieve those practical wins, your underlying data foundation has to be absolutely pristine

00:03:32: Which is hard.

00:03:33: Leslie Bennett from Geertab noted that while highly capable AI tools are ready and waiting The data coming out of fleets often just isn't

00:03:41: Right.

00:03:42: because if you're asset tracking is disconnected From real-world dispatch operations AI accelerates path to wrong conclusion.

00:03:49: But Geotab is actively trying to bridge that exact gap, right?

00:03:53: Aaron Jarvis and Leslie Bennett both highlighted the recent rollout of Geotabs new MCP connector.

00:03:58: Oh

00:03:58: yeah!

00:03:59: The mechanism there's fascinating

00:04:00: It really is.

00:04:01: they're bringing live trusted verified fleet data directly into secure AI environments like Chachi PT or Claude.

00:04:10: So you aren't just asking a generic language model some theoretical question anymore.

00:04:14: No You are querying your fleets actual thirty-seven trillion specific data points and doing it securely.

00:04:21: And

00:04:21: that fundamentally shifts the whole concept of what a dashboard even is, I mean, Aksana Lavagna talked about this.

00:04:27: legacy fleet portals were entirely passive.

00:04:30: They're basically built to answer one reactive question right like What broke yesterday?

00:04:34: Exactly but next generation platforms they are evolving into active control layers.

00:04:39: A modern fleet manager needs a system That looks at say a vehicle's current state of charge The traffic along a route the payload weight,

00:04:47: and answers the active question.

00:04:49: Can this specific truck actually finish this dispatch window today?

00:04:53: Right!

00:04:54: But getting that active data is difficult when human chaos enters the equation.

00:04:58: Oh, Human Chaos Is The Best Part.

00:04:59: Look at the real-world AI building happening in India right now.

00:05:02: You're talking about Nilesh Thalam's project.

00:05:04: Yes, he built a system called Saathi which is voice AI co-pilot for drivers because he recognized this massive data leak in Indian fleet operations.

00:05:15: Which is what?

00:05:15: Exactly!

00:05:16: They run almost entirely on unstructured phone calls.

00:05:19: Wow Really?

00:05:20: Yeah, so a driver pulls over with the warning light.

00:05:23: They panic and they call dispatch or they send to WhatsApp voice note.

00:05:27: And historically that audio file is just where fleet data goes to die.

00:05:31: Well yeah I mean you can't run predictive analytics on a panicked phone call.

00:05:34: Exactly.

00:05:35: But with Safi The Driver simply talks to the Voice AI in their native language and explains what they're seeing On the dashboard.

00:05:41: Oh this brilliant.

00:05:42: So In the background the AI instantly pulls.

00:05:44: the last thirty days of That specific vehicles telematics

00:05:48: Yes!

00:05:49: spoke in symptom to a standardized fault taxonomy, scores the severity and translates that entire chaotic human interaction into a cleanly structured data row.

00:06:00: That is incredible!

00:06:01: And the speed at which this kind of technology has been deployed it's just staggering.

00:06:05: I mean Rihanna Wahau shared how he built live-deployed NEMT dispatch system.

00:06:10: NEMt?

00:06:11: That's nonemergency.

00:06:12: medical transportation right?

00:06:13: Right under a week using clod code Wait...

00:06:17: Under A

00:06:17: Week?!

00:06:18: For medical transport, that's incredibly

00:06:20: complex.

00:06:21: Highly complex!

00:06:22: You've got to factor in wheelchair accessibility specific patient appointment times highly variable route conditions.

00:06:29: And he didn't just build a prototype.

00:06:30: No He used natural language coding To build alive system running real operations with live GPS and auto assignment.

00:06:38: Wow

00:06:39: That radically lowers the barrier to entry.

00:06:42: I mean, that should terrify legacy software vendors who move at a snail's pace.

00:06:46: it absolutely forces The entire industry to adapt faster.

00:06:50: But you know having two brilliant software algorithm doesn't really mean much if your losing money on the physical assets themselves.

00:06:55: Oh

00:06:56: totally Phil Barnes brought up the massive margin drain of what he calls ghost assets Ghost

00:07:01: assets?

00:07:01: I love that term.

00:07:03: right these are trailers generators heavy equipment.

00:07:08: You know their location, but you have zero proof of their actual utilization.

00:07:12: Because a dot on the map is dangerous it gives you this false sense of control.

00:07:16: Exactly!

00:07:17: If a flatbed trailer is parked at a staging site for one hundred and seventy days untouched... ...you might end up leasing additional equipment to cover a temporary shortage

00:07:25: When you already own that capacity?

00:07:27: Yes.

00:07:28: You need trackers measuring engine hours power takeoff actual movement to prove its generating revenue.

00:07:34: And you can combine that utilization tracking with Ed Cornish's strategy.

00:07:39: He talked about merging telematics directly with fuel card data.

00:07:43: Oh, right because when you overlay the vehicles actual routed mileage and idling behavior With time stamped fuel purchases

00:07:50: You instantly eliminate exactly where your fuel dollars are leaking.

00:07:53: Yeah...you move from looking at this like reactive monthly expense report to proactive daily cost control.

00:07:59: Okay, so we've established that clean data and software act as this highly intelligent brain of a modern fleet?

00:08:05: Yep the brain is sorted

00:08:06: but that brain is useless if the physical trucks can't get the power they need to run the routes.

00:08:11: So let's pivot to the infrastructure reality of fleet electrification Which

00:08:15: frankly brutal right now

00:08:17: it really is.

00:08:18: If I put myself in the shoes Of A Fleet CFO i look at The Market And Think Demand Seem Soft Im Gonna Hold Off On Buying Electric Trucks

00:08:26: And Jamie Sands pointed out exactly why.

00:08:28: Fleets are not going to shift to EVs just because it like helps hit a corporate sustainability goal.

00:08:34: No, they'll transition the exact second that total cost of ownership.

00:08:37: The TCO crosses diesel and that aligns with their normal vehicle replacement cycle.

00:08:43: It is entirely math equation for them.

00:08:45: But waiting for the math perfectly aligned creates this highly dangerous adoption curve.

00:08:50: Jamie described as Slow, slow, slow fast.

00:08:54: Right because right now fleets are delaying purchases making demand look deceptively quiet.

00:08:59: But when that TCO line inevitably crosses every major fleet is gonna try to electrify their depots simultaneously.

00:09:05: And thats the cliff.

00:09:07: Because grid connections utility substation upgrades trenching That takes years of lead time.

00:09:12: We're sleepwalking toward a massive infrastructure cliff.

00:09:15: The trucks will be cheaper to run but the depot simply won't have the electrical capacity to charge them.

00:09:20: If you want a preview of what happens when that adoption curve goes vertical, You really just have to look at China.

00:09:26: Oh

00:09:26: the scale there is unbelievable!

00:09:28: Steph Cornelis and Frederick Bell shared dispatches from an electric truck tour over there And it makes the European and North American markets Look completely stagnant.

00:09:38: Yeah companies like Deepway & Farazan They're completely rethinking The physics Of the vehicle.

00:09:43: They aren't just taking an old diesel chassis and like retrofitting heavy battery packs into the frame rails.

00:09:49: Right, they're designing electric only cabins from the ground up which allows them to drastically alter the aerodynamics and reposition the weight to maximize payload capacity.

00:09:59: And there are largely bypassing the depot grid bottleneck that we were so worried about in the west.

00:10:05: How so?

00:10:06: Well, they're aggressively deploying megawatt charging networks.

00:10:10: But more importantly... They are utilizing five-minute battery swaps for heavy duty trucks.

00:10:15: Wait!

00:10:15: Battery swapping for heavy transport?

00:10:17: Yeah If a local grid can't handle the massive power spike of fifty trucks charging simultaneously at a depot….

00:10:24: …they just swap the depleted batteries out and trickle charge them off peak when power is cheap & abundant.

00:10:30: Wow We largely ignored battery swapping for heavy transport and now our grid limitations are choking deployment.

00:10:38: Anthony Ocaribido actually sounded the alarm on this exact issue.

00:10:42: Yeah, he made a great point.

00:10:43: You can buy electric trucks to map routes but if local utility says it's gonna take three years To upgrade your site power

00:10:50: Your multi-million dollar fleet just sits idle.

00:10:53: So what is solution?

00:10:54: He advocates for mobile DC fast charging, using services like B Charge EV as an interim stop gap.

00:11:00: Oh so they literally bring the charging infrastructure to your yard?

00:11:04: Exactly!

00:11:05: To keep the wheels turning while you fight through permitting hell for permanent chargers.

00:11:09: That makes a lot of sense.

00:11:10: Mobile Charging keeps you operational But for a permanent scalable solution we have make electrons that already work much smarter.

00:11:18: Yeah Johann Olsen from Fraunhofer ICI published this incredible success story regarding depot energy management.

00:11:25: Proving that throwing more hardware at the problem isn't the only answer, right?

00:11:28: Right!

00:11:29: By integrating smart solar PV on-site battery storage and highly intelligent load balancing software a commercial depot cut its electricity costs by sixty two point five percent.

00:11:41: Sixty

00:11:41: Two Point Five Percent.

00:11:43: That's huge

00:11:44: It is.

00:11:44: The software dynamically shifts power between building needs, battery storage And trucks based on dispatch times.

00:11:52: Meaning, a standard two-megawatt grid connection can actually support significantly more vehicles than Standard Engineering models predict.

00:12:00: It's just incredible what happens when the software talks to hardware

00:12:03: And sometimes the hardware innovation is surprisingly simple.

00:12:06: Tyler Philippi highlighted this record breaking six hundred truck order that Orange EV secured for electric terminal trucks.

00:12:13: Six Hundred Trucks?

00:12:14: What was the linchpin of that deal?

00:12:16: A patented DCB Schisk converter from Optigrid.

00:12:18: The converter allows these new heavy-duty workhorses to plug directly into the existing CCS-I charging infrastructure.

00:12:25: Wait, CCS I isn't that a standard charging plug used for lighter passenger EVs?

00:12:29: Exactly!

00:12:30: By adapting the new trucks to use the chargers –the sites it already spent millions installing years ago– they removed the biggest friction point of the sale...

00:12:40: It always comes down to mitigating friction but the most underestimated friction point in fleet electrification is not technical at all.

00:12:48: It's the people, isn't it?

00:12:49: Yep.

00:12:50: Natasha Fry brought up The Immense Challenge of Internal Capability and Organizational Change Management

00:12:56: Because electrifying a fleet Isn't just buying new asset

00:12:59: No!

00:12:59: It completely upends Human resources Finance Procurement Daily Operations.

00:13:06: It requires massive stakeholder alignment across entire company

00:13:09: And that burden usually falls on the shoulders Of one severely stressed out fleet manager.

00:13:13: Exactly If you ignore the human element of change management The best technology deployment in the world will just stall.

00:13:19: And occasionally, the bravest management decision is to just pump the brakes?

00:13:23: Right.

00:13:24: Yesh Vance Suresh Babu shared a great example of this.

00:13:27: Yeah his team recently advised major corporate client To actively halt an EV decarbonization initiative on specific operational routes

00:13:34: Because business case was completely unviable.

00:13:37: I mean you cannot force sustainability initiatives.

00:13:40: that bankrupts operation.

00:13:42: The math has work or transition fails which brings us squarely back to the human element, theme three.

00:13:49: Yes safety driver experience and leadership because you can perfectly balance a depot's megawatt load And you can write the sleekest AI dispatch code in the

00:14:00: world.

00:14:01: But if the people sitting in the cab are miserable?

00:14:03: The leaders managing the budget or having their wrong conversations...the fleet will fail.

00:14:07: So let's go back to that scenario we opened with the driver getting penalized for saving a life.

00:14:13: Right Standard telematics provide the what, but they fail miserably at The Why.

00:14:18: Nicholas Richardson and Matthew Golding both pointed to AI video dash cams as a necessary evolution here.

00:14:24: So when a telemetry spike triggers a harsh ranking alert... ...the AI Dash Cam immediately provides the video context

00:14:32: Showing passenger car cutting off.

00:14:34: It allows the fleet manager to actively protect and reward their driver's skill rather than blindly disciplining them.

00:14:40: It elevates the entire safety culture from basic compliance, to evaluating actual human judgment.

00:14:47: Silverimanagem noted that true fleet safety measures a drivers prudence.

00:14:52: Prudence within this specific context of there environment yeah like how they anticipate risk based on road conditions weather traffic.

00:14:59: I have imagine though that installing Driver Facing AI cameras and a truck in Texas goes over very differently than trying to deploy that same technology.

00:15:09: And like

00:15:10: Germany, oh the cultural legal hurdles are massive.

00:15:14: Omar Reahi discussed the intense complexity of rolling out these systems in Europe compared to North America

00:15:19: because in the U S cameras are largely viewed by management as you know vital safety and liability shields.

00:15:25: but in Europe introducing a lens into the cab triggers a formidable web of stringent privacy regulations Plus,

00:15:32: union negotiations and deep-seated cultural pushback against employee monitoring.

00:15:36: It's a total minefield!

00:15:37: That friction is exactly why the privacy first innovation shared by Sergei Luchanka... ...is so compelling.

00:15:42: Oh, The Facial Driver ID System?

00:15:44: Yeah it's designed to build trust.

00:15:46: instead of heavy AI camera constantly recording drivers every move this system just requests single quick image when vehicles ignition starts

00:15:56: And the facial recognition happens off-device on the back end, right?

00:15:59: Just to link a specific driver for the shift.

00:16:02: Yes and then the image is instantly deleted.

00:16:05: so it completely automates the driver login process without creating permanent surveillance state inside of the cab.

00:16:11: Finding that middle ground is critical for driver retention but ok once you have drivers logged in and data flowing How do you tangibly improve their performance?

00:16:21: Well,

00:16:21: Steve Lockington addressed the safety plateau that frustrates so many fleets.

00:16:25: Where a driver triggers an alert... ...a manager sits them down for monthly coaching session.

00:16:30: Their behavior improves from maybe three weeks And then

00:16:33: they slowly slide right back into old habits.

00:16:36: Behavioral science proves that monthly coaching interventions are terrible at creating lasting change

00:16:41: Because it relies entirely on the manager to act as the enforcer.

00:16:45: If safety depends on a manager pulling data and scheduling a meeting, the manager is the bottleneck.

00:16:51: Precisely!

00:16:52: You had to build systems that shift ownership of safety directly to the driver Providing

00:16:56: daily reinforcement

00:16:58: Exactly Giving the driver immediate visibility into their own metrics Setting personal goals And using real time in-cab audio alerts

00:17:06: so they can instantly self-correct their following distance or speed before a manager ever has to get involved.

00:17:11: Right,

00:17:12: and retention isn't just about how we manage their driving.

00:17:15: you know it's heavily influenced by the physical environment we force them to work in.

00:17:19: We talk endlessly about the commercial driver shortage but David Fish from Ford Pro argues that The Vehicle Cabin itself is one of the most powerful retention tools a company has.

00:17:29: I mean if you force a professional driver to spend ten hours a day inside a noisy, vibrating ergonomically disastrous penalty box.

00:17:37: They're going to quit and they will go drive for a competitor who offers better seat?

00:17:41: We forget that the cab is their office!

00:17:44: Ergonomic seating advanced lane keeping assist.

00:17:47: that physically reduces the micro corrections of highway driving.

00:17:51: Seamless smartphone integration.

00:17:52: Yes

00:17:54: These are not luxury add-ons...they direct measurable investments in human resources and employee retention.

00:18:00: But designing those trucks correctly relies entirely on what Lehan Hansen called tribal knowledge.

00:18:06: Well, he shared some fantastic examples of how easily a fleet specification can go disastrously wrong if you don't listen to the operators.

00:18:14: Like ordering a service truck equipped with heavy-duty tap and an internal inverter but forgetting to spec proper ventilation.

00:18:20: So equipment constantly overheats.

00:18:23: or the classic snow plow mistake.

00:18:25: Oh, this one is crazy!

00:18:27: A procurement officer orders an eight-foot plow blade not realizing that once the driver angles the blade to push the snow...the clearing path shrinks to six and a half feet.

00:18:36: And if truck's rear wheels are seven feet wide?

00:18:38: The drivers constantly driving over unplowed snow packing it into dangerous ice.

00:18:43: You won't find those details in a manufacturer's glossy catalog.

00:18:47: That knowledge lives exclusively in the heads of veteran drivers who have actually plowed those routes in a blizzard.

00:18:54: And when those twenty-year veterans retire, that tribal knowledge walks out the door with them.

00:18:59: so The next multi million dollar order gets written by a procurement manager looking at a spreadsheet

00:19:06: leading to Incredibly costly operational blunders.

00:19:09: we have to capture that operational reality and translate it upward To the leadership

00:19:14: which brings us to the C-suite.

00:19:16: Ray Miller offered a very sharp critique of how fleet managers communicate with executives.

00:19:21: He said, if you are walking into a board meeting to argue about monthly lease costs and maintenance line items You're having the wrong conversation And you will lose their attention.

00:19:30: Fleet

00:19:30: leaders have to speak The language of the executives.

00:19:32: They need to frame Their arguments around maximizing asset uptime Minimizing legal safety exposure And optimizing daily cash flow.

00:19:40: And that justification barrier is exceptionally high in the public sector.

00:19:44: Raj Udeshi pointed out that municipal fleets like city governments, sanitation departments they don't actually suffer from a technology deficit.

00:19:53: They suffer from justification deficit.

00:19:55: A fleet director knows their aging garbage trucks are wildly inefficient but cannot walk into a City Council meeting and ask for ten million dollar modernization budget based on gut feeling.

00:20:06: They require defensible audit-ready data to prove the return on taxpayer investment.

00:20:12: And, The industry is finally stepping up to help them build those cases.

00:20:16: Joanne Golden highlighted that the recent ACT Expo launched a green book discussion.

00:20:20: Oh!

00:20:20: That's right.

00:20:21: they are actively bringing together manufacturers dealer networks and public procurement professionals To standardize how municipal fleets buy advanced vehicles

00:20:31: so that every individual transit agency doesn't have to reinvent the wheel and write custom solicitations every time they want to buy a clean truck.

00:20:40: You know, when you step back and look at all of these conversations from AI software to hardware infrastructure to drivers themselves... The absolute core mandate for commercial fleets right now is deep integration!

00:20:55: The

00:21:01: systems are completely interdependent now.

00:21:04: The AI data layer has to communicate with the charging hardware,

00:21:08: which has to physically support the truck...

00:21:11: Which has provide a safe environment for the driver….

00:21:13: ...which ultimately has to generate the defensible data needed to secure budget from the C-suite.

00:21:18: Exactly!

00:21:19: It's all connected.

00:21:19: Now if there is one provocative thought in these two weeks of in three debate it comes from Facunda to Sara.

00:21:27: He laid out a framework for modern fleet leadership.

00:21:29: We did

00:21:30: and the core tenet is this growth in fleet comes from doing uncomfortable things before you feel ready, that's

00:21:36: powerful.

00:21:37: So I want to leave you with a direct challenge based on everything we've unpacked today.

00:21:42: What is the one deeply uncomfortable conversation or the one complex metric?

00:21:48: That you are actively avoiding right now?

00:21:50: Is it forcing a conversation with the utility company about your depots

00:21:55: grid limits.

00:21:56: Is it pulling a utilization report that might prove you've wasted money on ghost assets?

00:22:02: Whatever it is, go do it!

00:22:04: Do before feel ready To

00:22:05: echo Dr Erica B Wadley who shared quote from Al Curtis at The Government Fleet Expo Be one to make your fleet better than found

00:22:13: because the idealized perfectly clean transition to next generation mobility just does not exist.

00:22:19: The data is messy, the infrastructure limits are daunting and that change management is frankly exhausting.

00:22:26: But the tools and the blueprints are finally here if you're willing to do hard work of connecting them.

00:22:31: If you enjoyed this episode, new episodes drop every two weeks!

00:22:34: Also check out our other editions on electrification in battery technology, future mobility & market evolution And next-gen vehicle intelligence.

00:22:42: Thanks for coming along with us today.

00:22:44: Make sure hit subscribe.