A journalist has more of an opportunity to see the workings of associations than does John Q. Public.

Because associations are so well covered by the nation's press, it does not take a journalist too many conventions or too many workshops to realize which associations offer real benefit to its members and which associations are merely tools of a manufacturing boy.

The National Association of Fleet Administrators has had 12 annual conventions since its formation in March of 1957. But the recently concluded conference in Toronto, Canada   (read the article here), which was the association's first outside the U.S., has to be the association's most successful.

A total of 432 delegates attended the three-day meeting. This was the largest attended conference in the association's history. One NAFA member who had attended every convention of the association felt he was seeing an "adolescent grow into manhood."

Another long-time NAFA member put it this way: "NAFA is no longer a fledgling, it has reached maturity."

Indeed it has. In a brief summation of: the convention's workshop sessions, Robert Berke, the association's very capable executive director, told of the "growing development among the association members in non-passenger cars, trucks, boats and mobile equipment. As you can see," Berke said. "NAFA has moved from its original intent to provide a meeting ground for people concerned with the operation of and administration of passenger car fleets."

I do not think that it is so much that NAFA has moved from its original intent, as I do that the profession of: fleet administrator is coming of age . . . that farsighted company management is realizing more and more the true value of a professional fleet administrator and is assigning more and more responsibilities to that manager.

Most of the country's top fleet administrators haven't gained management's respect by accident. They have worked hard . . . they have done their homework well. At the same time, however, they have been aided by one of the finest associations going today. . . NAFA.

Over the years, NAFA has offered the fleet administrator practical information that he can use in his daily operation. It has pro­vided the fleet manager with the tools, the know-how, to do a better job. The true beauty of NAFA in the past is that it has provided the nitty-gritty details of fleet administration to the fleet manager.

If there is one real danger that NAFA faces in the future it is a threat of getting away from this day-to-day help now being offered the administrator and turning instead to a philosophical discussion of what: fleet administration should and/or could be.

In line with this, a recently formed association, AFLA, Automotive Fleet and Leasing Association, appears to be an organization that will be of definite benefit to the fleet administrator. The role of AFLA is primarily one of teacher . . . not: just: for fleet dealers, who comprise a majority of AFLA's membership, but also for fleet buyers.

Through AFLA, fleet dealers and fleet administrators are at last being offered a platform, a forum if you will, to exchange ideas on car buying and disposal ... a platform to talk over better ways of doing business. This learning process is perhaps the first step toward some standardization among the "professional" fleet dealers. It is also the first "school" for the neophyte fleet dealer. It also is the first opportunity that I know of for the fleet administrator to sit clown with the fleet dealer and see how the fleet buyer-seller relationship can be improved.

AFLA, of course, is still in its embryonic stages. What the officers and members of the association do with their future is up to them. If, however, they want to use a guide for growth, I can think of no finer organization to set up as a yardstick than NAFA.

It is perhaps ironic that NAFA, the association that can best be used as a measuring stick for. AFLA, is also the association that stands to gain the most through the growth of the car fleet industry's newest birth.