At last year’s annual National Association of Fleet Administrators (NAFA) Fleet Management Institute (FMI) meeting, FLD, Inc. successfully launched its sales depreciation calculator with great interest from fleet managers. Visitors were given a chance to enter the FLD booth for a demonstration of how a combination of days to sell and the FLD remarketing process could affect a fleet manager’s bottom line. “People were lining up to see what the FLD booth had to offer,” said Laurie Conn, chief operations officer with FLD. “We felt this was one of the best NAFA-FMI shows to date.”

The sales depreciation calculator utilizes real-time market data from the current and previous year, along with five basic facts about vehicles (make, model, year, number of units, and days to sell) to quickly calculate the dollars lost with each added day the vehicle remains unsold. Once the data is inputted into the on-screen calculator, the display information relays how much FLD can save the customer in sales depreciation against any of today’s available benchmarks.        

“From pick up to sales documentation, we can save our clients time and money by shortening their remarketing process by days, weeks, and sometimes even months,” explained Gary Mott, FLD’s vice president of business development.

In response to a particular customer’s needs, Mott worked with FLD’s 14-person Microsoft Certified IT department for over two months to create the calculator. This online tool was designed to educate and assist fleet managers in evaluating the efficiency and affordability of their current remarketing process, said Mott. “We can now show how fleet managers can save thousands of dollars in sales depreciation by allowing FLD to buy their vehicles.”          

New Features Added for 2007

“In the new version, the depreciation calculator has had two pieces of information added to further define the unrecoverable holding costs for terminated vehicles: the cost of funds and the administration fee, both as a percentage of the capitalized cost. Says John Dawda, national fleet representative for FLD, “Holding costs are indeed manageable and can lower the overall standing costs of company vehicles by utilizing the proper remarketing channel, by being the direct buyer, and by reducing days to sell,” Dawda said.

The FLD calculator is also featured on Bobit Business Media’s new fleet remarketing section of the Automotive Fleet, Business Fleet, and Government Fleet Web sites, sponsored by FLD. The new section also features remarketing news, and articles. The site is located at www.fleet-central.com/af/t_remarketing.cfm#.