Meet the 2018 Fleet Visionaries

The Fleet Visionary Awards recognize 20 honorees with 10 years or fewer experience working in a fleet position at any level at the time of their nomination. It is open to those who have brought a new perspective to running a commercial fleet with the result that the fleet is more operationally efficient, cost-effective, safer, or any combination of these by introducing new methods, efficiencies, and/or technologies.

The award, sponsored by Merchants Fleet Management, is designed to recognize and celebrate new voices in fleet management. The honorees were announced at the 2018 Automotive Fleet & Leasing Association (AFLA) annual conference.

Nancy Murray

 

• Agfa Corporation
• Years in fleet: 7

As North American Facilities Manager, Nancy Murray assumed fleet responsibilities, along with travel & expense, for Agfa about 7 years ago. Since then, the changes implemented have enhanced and streamlined Agfa’s fleet program. One of her first accomplishments was phasing out the company’s allowance program with a scheduled phase out created not to cause undue monetary harm for employees with existing lease obligations as they moved to fleet vehicles.  She also evaluated the number of selectors offered to drivers, and created quarterly executive reporting to demonstrate improvement of the company’s fleet program as they modified parameters. She achieved her CAFM in April 2017, and is chapter chair for New Jersey NAFA.

Sarah Bechtold

• Ecolab
• Years in fleet: 3

A three-year veteran in global road safety management, Sarah Bechtold recently completed a successful test of a comprehensive driver safety program with more than 500 drivers and is in the process of an enterprise-wide rollout.  

Samantha Johnson

• AbbVie
• Years in fleet: 8

Samantha Johnson is the leader of AbbVie’s North American fleet program, and has implemented several initiatives, including improving the vehicle selection process and implementing new safety tech in vehicles.

Daniel Cannon

Schindler Elevator Corp.
Years in fleet: 3

As director of operational excellence, Daniel Cannon centralizied a fleet of 3,200 vehicles and focused on cost control measures. He redesigned the fleet across 60 field operations to a central headquarter.

Jim Curcio

• Hewlett Packard Enterprise
• Years in fleet: 1

Jim Curcio has optimized several areas of fleet, including idle vehicle management, supplier consolidation, vehicle selection simplification, and enhanced data analytics for a single global inventory. 

Chad Edmondson

• Ferguson Enterprises
• Years in fleet: 7

Chad Edmondson has been in his current role for 15 months. His core mission, values and principles as a fleet manager include safety, customer service, uptime, efficiency, cost savings and professional development. 

Raymond Jozwiak

• Cunningham Lindsey
• Years in fleet: 4

Raymond Jozwiak manages fleet category management across a global fleet of 2,000 vehicles – including cost reduction, safety, and carbon emissions reduction. He also established new fleet programs in six countries.

Karla Guajardo

• Honeywell
• Years in fleet: 2

Karla Guajardo helped create fleet initiatives for Honeywell’s business units while maintaining and improving customer experience to internal stakeholders. She simplified the ordering process; OEM, and upfitter negotiations; and focused on cost savings.

Milver Ramirez-Sweet

• DPR Construction
• Years in fleet: 3

Milver Ramirez-Sweet has implemented several fleet initiatives, including focuses on cost savings, and sustainability. Every fleet category she manages was rated at a 90% or higher satisfaction level by her drivers.

Mike Dunlap

Booster Fuels
Years in fleet: 2

Mike Dunlap’s efforts for Booster Fuels included streamlining the cleansing of the fleet’s cargo fuel tanks, learning Javascript to turn Google Spreadsheets into live dashboards to visualize fleet data, and creating a periodic maintenance schedule. 

Sean Maczko

• ACRT Pacific
• Years in fleet: 3

Sean Maczko helped transition ACRT from a flawed telematics system to a new and updated program to monitor the fleet. He coordinated over 700 installs across the country to ensure the fleet was installed with the monitoring devices.

Matthew Weisensel

• Saulsbury Industries
• Years in fleet: 6

Matthew Weisensel helped roll out a drive-camera system in a fleet of over 750 units, reducing accidents by almost 25%, and succesfully liquidated a portion of his fleet when the oil market fell roughly three years ago. 

Joelle Larente

• Bath Fitter
• Years in fleet: 4

Joelle Larente’s fleet initiatives includes the standardization of cargo van interior racking, the negotiation of multiple national contracts, creating a process for each type of fleet work, providing improvement ideas to FMCs, and improving safety monitoring and training. 

Ted Chan

• ABM Industries
• Years in fleet: 5

Ted Chan oversees a fleet of over 5,500 vehicles covering the entire United States and Canada. He helped introduce vehicle pool programs to minimize business interruptions, assure business continuity, and drive cost savings. 

Philip Orosco

• LKQ Corp.
• Years in fleet: 4

Philip Orosco has helped prevent unnecessary spending on maintenance costs, consolidated vendors, and standardized vehicle spec choices. Over the last three years, he reached a maintenance savings of $3.2 million and spec standardization savings of $4.8 million.  

Mario Moses

• Bayer
• Years in fleet: 10

Mario Moses’ innovations includes a 30% overall cost reduction in TCO during a four year period when inventory shifted to majority pickups. He also consolidated and outsourced internal operations for greater levels of services, satisfaction, greater compliance, and increased savings.

Daniel Lopez

Kraft Heinz Company
Years in fleet: 5

Daniel Lopez’ initiatives includes completing two RFPs for FMCs, currently managing a total of four FMCs with a mix of open and closed-end leases, while having three existing OEMs representing our fleet, and incorporating telematics. 
   

 

Richard Callis

• PepsiCo
• Years in fleet: 10

Richard Callis has implemented automated data integrations, process automation, and brought in both data science and statistical analysis during his career in fleet. He has performed different roles during his fleet career, including administration work, parts management, shop management, vendor management, and FIMS/IT infrastructure management.

Paulette Gates

• American Red Cross
• Years in fleet: 6

Paulette Gates is the primary fleet contact for employees who request assistance with certain fleet administration matters. She helped streamline the development of next generation emergency response vehicles for Red Cross, which offer improved service, fuel efficiancy, and reduced maintenance costs.

Josh Light

• Xcel Energy
• Years in fleet: 4

Josh Light has helped implement lifecycle analysis modeling to determine optimal replacement of the company’s 7,000 fleet assets.