Outside Expert Makes 'U-Turn' To In-House Fleet Boss Role

As a former account exec with Peterson, Howell & Heather, the big Baltimore-based leasing and business services company, Donald R. Kolb figures he has met and mastered just about every kind of management prob­lem that can befall the typical fleet administrator. For nine years, Don Kolb was called into some of the country's biggest fleet operators' of­fices to advise the resident fleet mana­gers on what seemed to be wrong and what should be done to put things right.

During his PH&H days, Kolb was the "outside expert," the man with the vision to see the big picture and the dispassionate ability to suggest cuts where they were called for, addi­tions where they would do the most good and changes in fleet policy that could be measured in dollars and cents. At the end of a typical day of advising clients on their fleet problems, Kolb could store details of a particular case in the trunkspace of his mind and go home, knowing the resident fleet boss would bear the responsibility for im­plementing (or disregarding) the sug­gestions of the "outside expert."

After nine years of helping fleet managers solve their problems, Don Kolb made a startling U-turn in his career last summer. He is now the in-house boss of an 800-unit car fleet driven by the itinerant colleagues of "Ronald" McDonald who prowl the nation's highways envisioning golden arches and fast-food franchises where others see only vacant lots or country crossroads.

Kolb was originally called to the Oak Brook, Illinois, headquarters of McDonald's Corporation to help the "Big Mac" of the fast-food business find a fleet administrator. Although he was able to draw on the accumulat­ed reserves of PH&H fleet expertise and the McDonald's people were of­fering enough hamburger to keep any fleet chief well-fed, the recruiting ef­fort never got off the back burner.

After conducting a lengthy but fu­tile fleet boss search, the McDonald's people and Kolb finally came up with the right recipe when the hamburger magnates made an offer to recruit the recruiter and Kolb accepted.

INDUSTRY CREDIBILITY GAP

Although some of his former col­leagues view the move from "outside expert" to in-house fleet boss as a downward step, Kolb heartily dis­agrees.

"A credibility gap exists in the leas­ing and fleet management industry," Kolb says, "that often results in client firms not knowing what outside advice to follow and what to ignore."

"My move to McDonald's repre­sents an opportunity to implement fleet management innovations, not simply suggest changes that may be forgotten as soon as I leave a client's office," Kolb believes.

Of the 800-odd fleet drivers Kolb is now responsible for, only 20 are true "professional" drivers. The cars are in daily use by McDonald's field consul­tants, area supervisors, real estate peo­ple, public relations persons and other management men and women con­cerned with the growth of the ever­-growing fast-food chain.

One Kolb innovation has been to tap the road and vehicle expertise of the firm's 20 "professional" drivers and distribute this knowledge through­out the fleet. Scattered around the country, the 20 pros were originally drivers of buses used in McDonald's public relations and marketing cam­paigns. Kolb upgraded these drivers to "transportation specialists" and gave them a wide range of added responsi­bilities aimed at keeping the nation­wide fleet rolling.

McDonald's transportation special­ists now maintain ongoing dialogues with those fleet drivers in their areas, "stressing defensive driving techniques, automotive maintenance requirements and other aspects of safety and good car care. Backed by the headquarters staff, the transportation specialists are supplied with copies of individual fleet drivers' expense reports. From these documents, the transportation special­ists can tell, for instance, whether or not a particular car's oil has been changed when such preventive mainte­nance was called for.

Kolb reports that the great bulk of McDonald's fleet drivers "appreciate" the input they receive from the trans­portation specialists and, in many cases, have begun to seek out the pros in their midst for advice on safe driv­ing, maintenance and routes to travel through unfamiliar terrain.

As part of his fleet plans for 1977, Kolb intends to expand the transporta­tion specialist program and tie it to a "high impact" safety effort. Kolb's years with PH&H left him with the im­pression that few organized fleet safe­ty programs are of lasting value to the drivers.

Working with McDonald's insurance department staffers, Kolb hopes to implement a "safety van" concept that would bring the importance of safe driving and automotive maintenance to the company's drivers in the field. He envisions a van that would be equipped with a driving simulator set­up so that drivers could be electronically tested on their reactions to a vari­ety of programmed road-hazard situations. Once a driver's bad habits are identified by the simulator, "re-educa­tion" would become relatively easy, Kolb believes.

Kolb's planned safety van would al­so be equipped to screen films on safe­ty and car care with the hope that the drivers would have fewer accidents and the cars would be worth more at trade-in time. With 800 drivers in the fleet, use of the safety van would be on a day-to-day, year-round basis, Kolb anticipates.

With the exception of about 80 cars that are company-owned, the McDon­ald's fleet is leased from - who else? - PH&H. Kolb points out that McDon­ald's came to PH&H before he came to McDonald's, and the relationship has been mutually satisfying ever since. The fast-food chain's current fleet re­placement policy is three years or 60,000 miles, with some 30-percent of the drivers buying the cars them­selves when they are taken out of com­pany service.

DRIVERS CHOOSE OPTIONS

"QSC&V" is a term frequently heard in the spacious and architectur­ally stunning McDonald's headquarters building. The acronym stands for Qual­ity, Service, Cleanliness & Value - a company slogan Kolb believes aptly describes the fleet. The bulk of the fleet is made up of the Chevrolet Malibu Classic, the Ford LTD II, the Mercury Marquis, the Buick LeSabre and the hot-selling Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme.

Kolb invites his drivers to choose from a wide variety of options so they will be comfortable with their cars, will have strong motivation to keep them in good repair, and the fully-equipped vehicles will draw top dollar at resale.

As fleet manager for McDonald's, Kolb reports to Whitey Andres, the firm's manager of transportation. An­dres, concerned with all the company's modes of transportation, oversees the use of the firm's 20 public relations buses and a variety of corporate air­craft, as well as Kolb's fleet. Andres, in turn, reports to McDonald's financial vice president.

Although many of the McDonald's fleet decisions are arrived at with the judicious use of computer data, Kolb has plans to develop even tighter con­trol over the fleet by expanding the information output of the electronic brain. Kolb says the "financially ori­ented" fleet manager has the best grasp of a company's fleet policies and the computer is the ideal tool to help tighten that grasp.

Based on his PH&H experience, Kolb is able to compare the "financial" fleet chief to the fleet manager who is "traffic" oriented. "The two have dif­ferent objectives," he says, "and com­munication tends to break down when the traffic-minded manager attempts to deal with his firm's financial people."

Expanding on that theme, Kolb be­lieves the typical fleet manager "does not have all the answers, but does us­ually have a relustance to accept and act on information from leasing com­pany account execs." The other side of the credibility gap, Kolb says, is the existence of a "big hole" in the kind of information the major leasing com­panies provide their clients.

Although the typical account exec will make more fleet decisions than the typical fleet manager, it is the in-house manager who must bear the res­ponsibility for the success or failure of a company's fleet policies. With that in mind, Kolb declares it makes no mat­ter where fleet policies originate; it is the job of the resident fleet boss to sell those policies to the drivers who ap­pear beneath him on a company's organization chart and the financial peo­ple who are above him on the same chart.

"The typical fleet manager is very much in the middle where every op­portunity for achievement is balanced by the possibility of making expensive mistakes," Kolb concludes. As one who has worked both sides of the fleet management street, he should know.