Driving Dynamics has had a busy year. Recently the fleet safety training and risk management company was acquired from its retiring founders by Art Liggio, who is the company’s president and CEO. Also, in late July the company acquired Element Fleet Management’s Center for Transportation Safety (CTS) training unit.

And Driving Dynamics isn’t showing any signs of slowing down. Indeed, there are more plans on the horizon to expand what the company has to offer to the world of fleet safety.

Driving Dynamics is looking to break the mold of what is currently available in fleet safety education. Liggio said the reason for this is because the fleet safety world is very underserved.

“Most everyone involved with fleet safety training has been very small, privately-held businesses which are typically minimally funded,” said Liggio. “My vision is to become the provider with both the breadth and the scope of services as well as the financial wherewithal to offer comprehensive solutions to fleet companies and fleet operators as well as strategic service partners. For the most part it’s been a cottage industry and we’re making it industrial grade.”

This vision led Liggio and Driving Dynamics to push for initiatives to help the company grow in the space, which includes the announcements made in July.

Latest Initiatives

When Liggio acquired Driving Dynamics from its retiring founders, Bill Buff and Paul Hubbard, who had owned the company since 1987, he stepped into the role of managing owner with majority owner Intuitis LLC, an investment firm with offices in New York and Paris, and investment bank Delancey Street Capital Partners of Conshohocken, Pa.

The reason for choosing these investment groups was that Liggio wanted a team that was committed to growing the fleet safety management company for the long term. He was also interested in Intuitis because of its footprint in Europe, as Driving Dynamics is looking to launch an upcoming global initiative that has been two years in development and tested under a pilot program.

Following the ownership change, Liggio said that Driving Dynamics has actively pursued other fleet safety companies with great intellectual property and a sizeable footprint to further expand its portfolio of results-driven safety and risk management services. It was this effort that led to Driving Dynamics acquiring Element’s CTS training unit.

With this new business, Driving Dynamics now has access to the heavy-duty trucking market, a segment which the company was not previously servicing. The acquisition expands Driving Dynamics’ training offerings by beefing up its behind-the-wheel, simulator and online training, as well as classroom instruction for various segments in the fleet industry, while preserving the fleet management company’s safety offering to its own clients. CTS’s light-duty training will be added to Driving Dynamics’ portfolio in this segment.

In addition to its extensive list of fleet clients, with CTS, Driving Dynamics now has the most extensive training footprint in North America, which will be a key benefit to its numerous fleet management company (FMC) partners and their clients, and will enable it to offer its programs at twice the number of locations. “We’re conducting training right in everyone’s backyard on a regular basis throughout the year,” said Liggio.

“It’s bringing together something new with something proven; we’ve been the leading provider of fleet safety training services for so many of the FMCs for years and years, but now this expansion means we can offer a broader range of client-valued services to our strategic partners as well as our direct customer,” he said.

Growing for the Future

Moving forward with future innovations and acquisitions, Liggio said that Driving Dynamics looks to become the “go to” source for fleet driver safety and risk management.

“We are building something substantive and long-term that’s able to respond quickly to: regulatory and legal changes, safety and environmental issues, and infrastructure challenges. There are so many factors that are complicating the mix in terms of actually producing safe driving results,” said Liggio. “We want to be there to offer an integrated, end-to-end solution that competently and expeditiously addresses all of those pain points at the highest level of engagement with all of our stakeholders.