Author: Chris Brown
As disasters disrupt operations, fleets rely on flexible fuel controls and real-time authorization to remain on the road. When disasters strike, fleets often face operational challenges that transcend damaged infrastructure or disrupted routes. Fuel access and payment authorization can quickly turn into critical issues, especially when vehicles are deployed outside their normal operating regions.We spoke with representatives from U.S. Bank Voyager about how fleets can prepare their fuel accounts ahead of a disaster and what support is on the market to maintain vehicles moving during emergency response.AF: What’s probably the most common pain point fleets face during a disaster, from…
The 2026 Conference of Automotive Remarketing convened in Cleveland April 15-16, collocated with NAFA I&E. The Conference of Automotive Remarketing (CAR) returned this yr at a moment when the industry continues to be recalibrating after several years of disruption. If there was a single theme that surfaced repeatedly throughout the sessions, it was that remarketing today comes right down to velocity plus value.Held April 15-16 on the Huntington Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, at the side of the NAFA I&E, the 30-year-old conference goes through an evolution. CAR traditionally connects vehicle consignors, auction decision-makers, suppliers, and industry leaders to debate trends, share…
A Waymo vehicle sits outside a San Jose theater at a tech event in 2019, when autonomous deployment was still largely experimental. Autonomous vehicles have moved from pilot programs to real-world deployment, but are still waiting to scale. It was around 10 years ago that the acronym ACES (or CASE) took hold. The letters stand for “autonomous, connected, electric, and shared.” It was called Latest Mobility on the time, representing our optimistic way forward for transportation. From then to now, none of those paradigms has taken a straight adoption path — though the C could also be suffering through the fewest…
February 19, 2026 At Geotab Connect 2026 in Las Vegas, Chris Brown of Automotive Fleet sat down with industry veteran Rob Minton, retired from Geotab and founding father of Revved Up Strategies, to interrupt down a very powerful fleet technology trends emerging from the conference. Minton highlights how artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming fleet management, not only on the enterprise level, but in addition by making advanced analytics accessible to on a regular basis fleet managers. He also discusses how real-time OEM data, AI-powered dashcams, and predictive maintenance are moving fleets beyond static dashboards toward dynamic, action-oriented operations. The conversation centers on…
The 2026 CAR Conference might be held in Cleveland, Ohio on April 15-16. Mileage, age, and visual inspections have long served as the inspiration of car valuation in fleet remarketing. But as connected vehicle data becomes more accessible, those traditional proxies now not tell the total story.That’s the main focus of “From Proxies to Performance: How Vehicle Health Signals Could Reshape Valuation,” a session going down on the 2026 Conference of Automotive Remarketing (CAR). The seminar might be led by Arun Rajagopalan, CEO and co-founder of Motorq.Where Condition Assessments and Real-World Vehicle Data DivergeThe session will explore how most remarketing…
The IRS standard mileage rate remained remarkably stable through the Nineteen Eighties and Nineteen Nineties, but within the 2019-2023 period alone, it saw a 9.5-cent swing driven by pandemic disruptions, supply chain chaos, and record inflation. Ah, the IRS standard mileage reimbursement rate. From 1980 to 1989, the speed only fluctuated by 2 cents! (And so they thought inflation was bad back then?)Flashforward to 2026: The speed has climbed to 72 cents per mile, an almost 30% increase from 56 cents in 2021. It’s no use to pine for the great ol’ days, because they’re not coming back. The recent spike…
January 19, 2026 On this episode of Automotive Fleet’s State of the Fleet Industry video series, Chris Brown sits down with auto industry analyst and media veteran Charlie Vogelheim to interrupt down the fleet-relevant takeaways from CES 2026. From autonomous vehicles and driverless trucks to robotics, AI, and next-generation batteries, Vogelheim shares what stood out on the show floor. He highlights where real progress is being made and where concepts remain years away from business viability. B-roll courtesy of Consumer Technology Association (CTA)® 🧭 Key topics include:🤝 Follow and connect with Automotive Fleet on social media! This Article First Appeared At www.automotive-fleet.com
The corporate automobile. It became a standing symbol of corporate life across the days of the Gregory Peck movie, The Man within the Gray Flannel Suit. It remains to be — and can proceed to be — a beneficial perk for attracting and retaining top talent and keeping them protected and productive. Yet company automobile policies deserve periodic scrutiny, as budgets, fleet makeup, and organizational priorities change. At the identical time, latest reimbursement programs and greater insights gleaned from benchmarking data are introducing alternative viewpoints that challenge traditional assumptions.As 2026 approaches, fleets are reassessing how they balance fleet and reimbursement based…
Mike imparted his knowledge from the stage, in meeting rooms, through editorials and articles, and one-on-one with the people he met. Business titles are useful, but only in a narrow sense, as an expedient technique to rank someone you don’t know of their work hierarchy. Mike Antich’s title at Bobit was Associate Publisher/Editor of Automotive Fleet. While that’s true, it’s woefully inadequate to explain his monumental importance to the fleet industry. Over his 40-year profession in fleet, he was also a board member, president, officer, secretary, committee chair, conference chair, speaker, podcaster, global ambassador, founder, award winner, and hall of famer.…
This past yr tested fleet managers, from tariff speculation and budget uncertainty to technician shortages and technology integration. This past yr tested fleet managers, from tariff speculation and budget uncertainty to technician shortages and technology integration. Pulled from Automotive Fleet’s news, profiles, articles, blogs, and videos, fleet managers shared insights on what worked, what didn’t, and what keeps their fleets moving. On the 2025 Merchants Fleet Summit, supplier and fleet manager clients gathered to check strategies for managing cost pressure, supply-chain volatility, and rising safety and liability exposure in a post-pandemic operating environment.During a panel discussion on risk management and private use…