Best of LinkedIn: Commercial Fleet Insights CW 04/ 05

00:00:00: brought to you by Thomas Allgaier and Frennis.

00:00:02: This edition highlights key LinkedIn posts on commercial sleets from weeks oh four and oh five.

00:00:07: Frennis supports automotive enterprises and consultancies with market customer and competitive intelligence in the commercial fleet sector with a strong focus on digital solutions and emerging technologies.

00:00:19: And you know, looking at the posts from the last couple of weeks, I really feel like we're past the.

00:00:25: the shiny object phase of fleet management.

00:00:28: You mean we're done with the press releases about, what, flying taxis and saving the planet by next week?

00:00:33: Exactly.

00:00:34: The whole conversation has shifted.

00:00:35: It feels... Well, it feels heavier.

00:00:37: We're not talking about ambition anymore.

00:00:39: We're talking about execution.

00:00:41: Right.

00:00:41: The really gritty, unlamorous reality of actually making these trucks move, making the numbers work, and keeping drivers safe.

00:00:49: It sounds like the hangover after the big hype party.

00:00:51: That is a perfect way to put it.

00:00:53: We've woken up, we've looked at the spreadsheet, and we've realized, oh, there's actual work to do.

00:00:57: So

00:00:57: what's on the agenda for this deep talk?

00:00:59: We've got four big themes that really stood out.

00:01:01: First, electrification roadmaps that are actually... you know, bankable.

00:01:05: Second, AI that's moving from just seeing to doing.

00:01:10: Third, a huge shift in safety culture.

00:01:13: And finally, how to avoid this thing called the doom loop in operations.

00:01:18: The doom loop.

00:01:19: Okay, that sounds dramatic.

00:01:20: I like it.

00:01:21: But let's start with the electrons.

00:01:23: For so long, electrification was all about the truck itself.

00:01:27: You know, look at this torque, look at this new grill.

00:01:30: But reading a post from Natasha Fry at Mer.

00:01:33: That is definitely not what's keeping fleet managers up at night in twenty twenty six.

00:01:36: No, not at all.

00:01:37: Natasha pointed out something that feels so obvious, but I mean, it gets overlooked all the time.

00:01:42: The planning gap.

00:01:43: The planning gap.

00:01:44: Yeah.

00:01:44: She's seen projects just stall out because of what happens before a single charger even gets plugged in.

00:01:49: We're talking site surveys, engaging with the DNO, the distribution network operator.

00:01:54: And

00:01:54: just to clarify for everyone listening, the DNO is the company that actually owns the power lines coming to your building.

00:01:59: Exactly.

00:02:00: And if you don't talk to them early, you might find out your depot doesn't have enough juice to charge ten vans, let alone fifty.

00:02:07: Natasha's whole point is that skipping these quote boring steps like load testing or journey storyboarding, it turns into a financial disaster down the road.

00:02:17: You end up digging up concrete you just poured.

00:02:19: It's the classic measure twice cut once, but for, you know, high voltage infrastructure.

00:02:24: It's funny, you can really see that mindset shift.

00:02:27: Mark Oxtoby weighed in saying, twenty-twenty-six is all about availability and cost control.

00:02:32: It feels like the CFO has finally entered the chat.

00:02:35: Oh, the CFO is definitely running the show now.

00:02:37: And that financial pressure is actually creating new business models.

00:02:40: It's not just by the truck, by the charger anymore.

00:02:43: Look at what Arthur Halsall and Mauricio Sardi from ZE ports are talking about with charging as a service or growth gas.

00:02:50: This is really interesting because it tackles the biggest hurdle, right?

00:02:53: The massive upfront cost.

00:02:55: it completely flips the script.

00:02:57: Normally, you need a huge capital expenditure budget, CapEx, for the charters, the grid upgrade, all of it.

00:03:05: Kat says, no, no, we'll do all that.

00:03:06: We own it, we maintain it, you just pay a monthly fee.

00:03:09: So it moves it from CapEx to OpEx.

00:03:11: It's like a utility bill instead of a huge construction project.

00:03:14: Which makes it bankable.

00:03:16: That is the key word for twenty twenty six.

00:03:18: If a project isn't bankable, it's basically dead.

00:03:21: But we did get some news on the actual trucks, the metal itself.

00:03:26: Cody C. from GM was highlighting the new Chevy Silverado EVWT.

00:03:31: The work

00:03:32: truck edition,

00:03:33: yeah.

00:03:33: And the number that really jumped out was the range, nearly five hundred miles.

00:03:37: That number changes everything.

00:03:39: Five hundred miles isn't just more driving, it completely changes your operational map.

00:03:43: One of the biggest arguments against EVs was the, you know, the tether.

00:03:46: The idea that a driver has to come back to base or stop to charge.

00:03:49: Which just kills productivity.

00:03:50: A plumber can't do another job if he's sitting at a charger for forty-five minutes.

00:03:54: Precisely.

00:03:55: But with five hundred miles, you can do a full shift, cover a huge territory, run the heat, and still get back to the depot.

00:04:02: It mimics the behavior of a diesel truck.

00:04:04: It removes that behavioral tax of switching.

00:04:07: And

00:04:08: speaking of mimicking diesel, we have to talk about Bill Pierce's update.

00:04:11: An electric HGV crossing the channel tunnel.

00:04:14: This was a massive milestone.

00:04:16: It was a Cune plus Nagel truck, fully electric, carrying twelve tons, and it did a one thousand and fifty-six mile round trip.

00:04:24: from the UK to France.

00:04:26: That's a real international logistics run.

00:04:28: That is not a little last mile delivery van.

00:04:31: It proves that long haul heavy freight with zero emissions isn't just science fiction.

00:04:35: It's happening.

00:04:37: But, and there's always a, but it all depends on the infrastructure.

00:04:39: Which brings us to my favorite quote of the week.

00:04:42: Yeah.

00:04:42: It was from Johannes Kernberger at Delta Charge.

00:04:45: He just said, we're not a software company.

00:04:46: We're building real infrastructure.

00:04:48: It's such a necessary reality check, isn't it?

00:04:50: We get so excited about software and digital twins.

00:04:52: But Johannes is reminding us that at the end of the day, someone has to put copper in the ground.

00:04:57: You can't download a kilowatt.

00:04:59: You cannot download a kilowatt.

00:05:01: I love that.

00:05:02: Okay.

00:05:02: So assuming we get the copper in the ground, we move to the next layer.

00:05:07: the data.

00:05:07: And this brings us to our second theme, AI and telematics.

00:05:12: The vibe I'm getting is that we are just drowning in data.

00:05:16: We are absolutely drowning.

00:05:17: Stephen White from GeoTab put it perfectly.

00:05:20: He said that for twenty twenty six, more data is actually a bottleneck.

00:05:23: A

00:05:24: bottleneck.

00:05:24: Yeah.

00:05:25: If you manage a fleet of five thousand vehicles, you don't want a dashboard with five thousand blinking dots.

00:05:31: You want to know which three dots are currently on fire.

00:05:33: Right.

00:05:34: White talks about the shift from watching to acting.

00:05:38: He calls it Agentech

00:05:39: AI.

00:05:40: Agentech as in it has agency.

00:05:41: The AI can actually do things.

00:05:43: Yes.

00:05:44: So instead of the system just popping up a check engine light that you stare at, the Agentech AI identifies the fault, it checks the vehicle's route, finds the nearest service hub with the right parts, and then it schedules the appointment.

00:05:54: So it takes the first three steps of the workflow completely off your plate.

00:05:57: It's not a notification system, it's a management system.

00:06:00: It closes the loop.

00:06:02: And Paul Miller mentioned their ACE assistant, which lets you just ask it questions in natural language.

00:06:07: You can just ask which drivers improve their safety scores this month.

00:06:10: You don't have to be a data scientist.

00:06:12: That's huge.

00:06:13: It democratizes the data.

00:06:16: All this tech costs money.

00:06:18: And this is where a framework from Selene Parlak comes in.

00:06:20: She talks about green dollars versus blue dollars.

00:06:23: And I think this is something every listener needs to hear.

00:06:25: It's

00:06:26: brilliant.

00:06:26: Selene argues that if you want to get your budget approved, you have to know the difference.

00:06:30: Blue dollars are the soft benefits.

00:06:32: Things like visibility or happier drivers.

00:06:35: The

00:06:35: things that feel good, but you can't really put them on a balance sheet.

00:06:38: Exactly.

00:06:39: Finance teams will nod politely at your blue dollars and then say no.

00:06:43: Green dollars on the other hand are hard defensible savings costs per mile reduction lower insurance premiums.

00:06:51: So my drivers will really like.

00:06:52: this app is a blue dollar pitch.

00:06:54: Mm-hmm.

00:06:54: This app reduces fuel theft by twelve percent.

00:06:57: is a green dollar pitch.

00:06:58: bingo You have to translate the benefit into hard currency and we're seeing companies do this by getting really specific.

00:07:05: Greg Spiro pillows shared a partnership between Geo tab and CD wear for the ready-mix concrete industry.

00:07:12: that is just.

00:07:14: This is the one where they're tracking the drum rotation, right?

00:07:15: Yes.

00:07:16: It's vertical integration at its finest.

00:07:18: They're not just tracking where the truck is.

00:07:20: They're tracking water additions, slump measurements, and the drum's rotation.

00:07:24: So for those of us not in construction, why is the drum rotation so important?

00:07:28: Because if that drum stops turning while it's full of wet concrete, the concrete hardens.

00:07:33: You don't just lose the load, you lose the truck, you have to get a jackhammer.

00:07:36: It is a catastrophic loss.

00:07:39: Got it.

00:07:40: Monitoring that is a massive green dollar protection.

00:07:42: That makes so much sense.

00:07:44: And the stakes are just as high with EVs.

00:07:47: Justin Quest, he brought up this point about production grade telematics.

00:07:50: Yeah, he's basically warning against using old diesel tools on new electric trucks.

00:07:56: He says you need data at one hertz so, one reading every single second to properly manage battery health.

00:08:02: Because if you're only checking once a minute, you could miss something.

00:08:05: You could miss a voltage spike or a thermal event that permanently damages the battery.

00:08:11: And the battery is what, half the value of the whole vehicle?

00:08:14: You have to watch it like a hawk?

00:08:15: Yeah.

00:08:16: And the hardware is catching up too.

00:08:17: Kevin Rayfield from Modive was talking about their AI dash cam plus.

00:08:21: It actually combines the vehicle gateway and the dash cam into one unit.

00:08:26: Which sounds like a boring little hardware spec, but.

00:08:28: But anyone who runs a fleet knows that cables are the enemy.

00:08:32: A driver kicks a cable, a connector vibrates loose, and you go dark.

00:08:36: Combining them removes failure points.

00:08:38: It's just smart.

00:08:39: And that's a perfect transition to our third theme, safety and risk.

00:08:44: Because the whole narrative around cameras is really flipped, hasn't it?

00:08:47: It used to be big brother is watching.

00:08:49: Now it feels more like the camera is your witness.

00:08:52: That shift is profound.

00:08:54: Philany Hardiman from Samsara shared a story from Brandon Hire station that just illustrates this perfectly.

00:09:01: One of their drivers was cut off and then hit by a motorcyclist.

00:09:04: Which is pretty much a nightmare scenario for any commercial driver.

00:09:07: Oh, absolutely.

00:09:08: It's he said, she said, and the big truck almost always gets the blame.

00:09:12: But they had the footage.

00:09:14: It showed the motorcyclist cutting across multiple lanes.

00:09:17: The driver was exonerated on the spot.

00:09:19: And that right there is a huge green dollar win.

00:09:22: You avoid the lawsuit, the insurance claim, the reputation damage.

00:09:26: The system pays for itself in that one incident.

00:09:29: Constantino Slimbises calls it avoiding the three AM call.

00:09:33: That call where a truck is in a ditch, you have no idea what happened, and you know you're about to write a very, very large check.

00:09:39: Right.

00:09:39: But the real goal is to avoid the crash in the first place.

00:09:42: Jim Hill cited the Samsar Fleet Safety Report, and the numbers are just staggering.

00:09:48: Mobile phone distraction dropped eighty-four percent in the first six months of using AI cameras.

00:09:52: And ninety-six percent by thirty months.

00:09:54: I mean, think about that.

00:09:55: We're not just catching bad behavior.

00:09:57: We are rewiring human behavior.

00:10:00: The tech is getting so good.

00:10:02: MJ Stevens from Motive was claiming their AI is three to four times more accurate than competitors at detecting this stuff.

00:10:08: And the insurers are definitely noticing.

00:10:10: Samantha Baxter talked about a partnership between Alliance UK and Samsara.

00:10:14: And Matteo Carbone noted that sixty percent of insurers now use telematics.

00:10:19: It's becoming table stakes.

00:10:21: If you want a good insurance premium, you have to prove you're managing your risk.

00:10:25: But there is a darker motivator here too.

00:10:27: The regulators are... They're losing their patience.

00:10:30: Samuel Elkins shared a stat from a British Columbia inspection blitz that just stopped me cold.

00:10:36: The fifty-six percent failure rate.

00:10:37: Fifty-six percent of the commercial vehicles they pulled over were taken off the road.

00:10:42: That's terrifying.

00:10:44: More than half.

00:10:44: It's a huge wake-up call.

00:10:45: We're here talking about AI and EVs, but half the trucks in that sample weren't even roadworthy.

00:10:52: Elkins says complacency is high and the authorities are cracking down hard.

00:10:56: Which brings us perfectly to our last theme, operational discipline.

00:11:00: You can't have safety without reliability.

00:11:03: And Mark Canton introduced a concept I'd never heard of before, the doom loop.

00:11:08: Every fleet manager needs to understand this because it's a mathematical trap.

00:11:12: The doom loop starts when you try to save money by underfunding your fleet replacement.

00:11:17: You say, let's just keep these old trucks one more year.

00:11:20: Which looks great on this year's budget.

00:11:23: Hey, boss.

00:11:23: I saved us a million dollars in capex.

00:11:25: For a minute, yeah.

00:11:27: But then, because your fleet is older, your maintenance explodes, your mechanics are overwhelmed, availability drops because trucks are always in the shop.

00:11:35: So what do you do?

00:11:36: You have to rent trucks to keep making deliveries.

00:11:39: And rentals are expensive.

00:11:40: Extremely expensive.

00:11:42: So now your operating budget is completely blown on rentals and repairs, which means next year you have even less money to replace the old trucks.

00:11:51: And you just spiral down.

00:11:52: You're

00:11:52: trapped.

00:11:53: That is the doom loop.

00:11:54: The only way out is just discipline, planned asset replacement, no matter how much it hurts up front.

00:11:59: Kevin

00:12:00: Jan touched on a symptom of this too, didn't he?

00:12:01: The whole parts issue.

00:12:03: He said downtime is.

00:12:04: is usually just waiting, waiting for parts, waiting for approvals.

00:12:09: Right.

00:12:09: A hundred thousand dollar asset is sitting idle for three days because you're waiting on a fifty dollar sensor.

00:12:15: That inefficiency is what kills your margins.

00:12:18: It's a different kind of waste.

00:12:20: And Friday, Rajan Prasad had another great term for this, digital ballast.

00:12:25: I love this metaphor.

00:12:26: In shipping, ballast is weight.

00:12:28: you add for stability, but Digital Ballast is software that just adds a cognitive overhead mental weight without adding any real value.

00:12:38: Like a fancy new dashboard that no one ever looks at because it's too complicated.

00:12:41: Exactly.

00:12:42: If a new feature doesn't give the team peace of mind or actually speed up a process, it's just dead weight.

00:12:48: It's another thing to manage.

00:12:49: It all comes back to the physical reality of the job.

00:12:52: I was really struck by Michelin or six post.

00:12:55: He visited a water delivery fleet in Romania and he didn't just look at the data.

00:12:59: He went on a shift.

00:13:00: He unloaded one hundred and ninety two water bottles

00:13:03: by hand.

00:13:04: Wow.

00:13:05: I bet he needed a chiropractor after that.

00:13:07: I'm sure

00:13:07: he did.

00:13:08: But his point was so clear.

00:13:10: You cannot optimize a route just from a spreadsheet.

00:13:13: You have to know that this stop has a broken elevator or that street is impossible to make a left turn on at eight in the morning.

00:13:19: Facts from the field.

00:13:20: Facts from the field.

00:13:21: That's the core of operational discipline.

00:13:24: The data helps, the AI helps, but you have to understand the physical reality of the job.

00:13:29: So if we pull all this together from the high-level infrastructure planning all the way down to unloading water bottles, what's the big takeaway from these two weeks?

00:13:41: I think the message is that the industry is finally maturing.

00:13:44: We're moving past pilot purgatory where you just test cool things for a press release.

00:13:49: Yeah.

00:13:50: Now it's about scale, reliability, and cost.

00:13:52: Whether it's an EV or an AI camera, the question is always, does this make my fleet more resilient?

00:13:57: Does it save me green dollars?

00:13:58: And can I actually execute this without breaking my entire operation?

00:14:02: And if the answer to any of those is no, it's just digital ballast.

00:14:05: It's

00:14:05: ballast.

00:14:06: Throw it overboard.

00:14:07: Before we wrap up, I just want to leave our listeners with one last thought.

00:14:11: We talked a lot about that green dollar reality check.

00:14:14: But think about that doom loop concept again.

00:14:17: Ask yourself, are you saving money today that's going to cost you double or triple tomorrow?

00:14:23: That's a question worth taking to your finance team.

00:14:25: Absolutely.

00:14:26: The cheapest option today is very often the most expensive one over the life cycle of the asset.

00:14:31: If you enjoyed this episode, new episodes drop every two weeks.

00:14:34: Also check out our other editions on electrification and battery technology.

00:14:38: future mobility and market evolution, and next-gen vehicle intelligence.

00:14:42: Thanks for listening and keep your fleets moving.

00:14:44: See you next time, and don't forget to subscribe.