STEWART
Sucessful executives provide a strategic vision for the responsibilities they carry. They hire and motivate talented staff to carry out that vision, and they keep a focus on creating value for the company. Vic Stewart, VP, corporate purchasing for Advance Auto Parts (AAP), does all of these things, and he does them with flair. For his accomplishments, Stewart was named 2007 Fleet Executive of the Year, sponsored by Fleet Financials and the fleet management company, CEI.

Stewart, a long-time Advance employee, has supervised a fleet that has grown from a few hundred cars to a fleet of more than 6,000 vehicles that includes a broad range of vehicle types and missions. Headquartered in Roanoke, Va., Stewart has developed strategies to manage this remarkable growth, through instituting policies and processes and establishing partnerships with fleet suppliers.

Stewart has gathered a fleet department of talented and experienced staff to carry out these strategies. As a team, they have saved the company millions over the years.

FF: What is your background with Advance?

Stewart: I’ve been with Advance for 22 years. I started in the stores in March 1985 and became a store manager later that year. I worked as a store manager until 1991, when I was promoted to division manager in Florence, S.C., with responsibility for 14 stores. From there, I moved to the store support center in Roanoke in 1992, and have been there ever since. I’ve moved from director of budget & expenditure control to director of corporate purchasing, assistant vice president of corporate purchasing, and my current role, vice president of corporate purchasing.

FF: That’s a strong background. What are your primary duties as VP of corporate purchasing?

Stewart: My primary goal is to lead the company’s indirect spend, or “nonretail” procurement process. Our team provides the supply, services, and other “not for resale” purchasing needs of the company with the right quality product, at the right time, and at the most effective cost possible. Our goal is to partner internally with our business partners and budget owners to develop a procurement process that always leads us to a “best value” decision for our organization.

FF: Not for resale?

Stewart: Yes; we don’t buy the inventory sold in the stores. We source support goods and services — things the company needs to conduct business, which includes fleet vehicles and the services we need to manage them.

FF: What staff do you have?

Stewart: I actually have a staff of six that report directly to me. They include Carol Davies, our fleet manager, a director of corporate purchasing, contract manager, meeting and events coordinator, and two staff in our travel department. Ultimately, 13 team members report to me either directly or indirectly and are responsible for all facets of the procurement effort for the company.

FF: Tell us about the Advance Auto fleet; how many vehicles do you have?

Stewart: We’re running more than 6,000 vehicles overall in the fleet, including over-the-road tractors.

FF: What is the inventory break down?

Stewart: The large majority of our fleet consists of pickup trucks — more than two-thirds are light-duty pickups. We also have sedans, SUVs, and vans.

FF: What other vehicles are in the fleet?

Stewart: We also run Class 8 tractors and trailers, box trucks, straight trucks, and what we call “yard” trucks. It’s a pretty eclectic fleet with a range of missions.

FF: What are some of those missions? Do they include delivery?

Stewart: Absolutely. One way our fleet has changed over the years, at least since I’ve been involved, is company decision to enter into the distribution business, delivering the products we sell to our customers. That is the primary mission of the bulk of the fleet, our pickup trucks. Most of the autos are used for store support — field personnel who are responsible for store management and administration. Straight and box trucks are for delivery as well.
Vic Stewart (standing), meets with AAP fleet staff, (l-r) Carol Davies, fleet manager; and fleet administrators Ann Rhodes and Diana Thomas.

FF: Can you expand upon that point? How has the management of the AAP fleet changed over the years?

Stewart: The best way I can describe it is that we’ve evolved and matured over time. I became involved in fleet in 1993. At that time, we owned some 200 cars, and our responsibility was essentially limited to mileage reporting, asset management, personal property tax payment and administration, and the buying and selling of units.

FF: When did the company decide to begin distributing its products to customers?

Stewart: In 1995, we made the move into commercial delivery, and with that we began to lease the trucks. In the past, we were an owned fleet; the company was very conservative in its asset management outlook, so the move to leasing was a new idea to us. It provided us options never before used at AAP. Now, with the fleet having grown to more than 6,000 units, we lease autos, commercial delivery trucks, and tractors. The cash flow benefits have been enormous.

FF: What kind of options did you begin to use?

Stewart: As the fleet grew, we encouraged management to review the use of autos, leasing options, maximizing replacement value, and asset utilization. There were a number of fleet management and fleet administrative programs that we’d never taken advantage of before, and we recognized that fleet lessors could help us achieve our goals.

FF: Can you provide an example of these changes?

Stewart: An important change and point of success was in our order-to-delivery times. When we first entered into distribution, it took up to 11 full weeks from the time we ordered a truck to the time we picked up the finished product. We began to use a bailment pool of these units, which has reduced order-to-delivery time down to four weeks. We believe this is a remarkable increase in our productivity, and enables AAP to be far more agile in our operations.

FF: Tell us more about your management style, how you relate to your staff.

Stewart: I cannot say enough about Carol Davies, our fleet manager, who has been the driving force behind not only putting our fleet strategies in place, but carrying them out as well. Her input into the ongoing development of AAP fleet policy has been invaluable. As for my management style, I suppose I’d term it both hands-off and collaborative at the same time. I enjoy coaching and mentoring my staff, but try not to meddle in their day-to-day duties. I’ve always believed that if you hire the right people, and give them both the right tools, as well as clear direction concerning your goals and objectives, they will rise well beyond your expectations.

FF: How “hands-off ” are you? What kind of communications do you maintain with your staff?

Stewart: I try to be as open as possible. I hold bi-weekly meetings with my direct reports, but I also have an open-door policy that allows our team to come to me whenever they feel it is necessary, and encourage them to discuss whatever they believe is necessary, if needed, behind closed doors. The only thing I ask is when that door opens, we’re all on the same page moving forward.

FF: Delegation of responsibilities: good or bad?

Stewart: Definitely good. I have always encouraged our team to make decisions based upon facts and their beliefs, and at the end of the day, make certain they know the reasons they make those decisions. As I mentioned earlier, it isn’t my job to meddle in the day-to-day duties of my staff. My job is to provide the strategic vision, get them the resources they need, then step out of the way. The easiest thing to do is “please the customer,” and if we make our decisions with that thought in mind, we are almost always right in what we decide.

FF: How about you? Have you had a mentor?

Stewart: I believe, in one way or another, everyone who’s had success in their career has had a mentor, maybe more than one. I can recall Garnett Smith, former president of Advance, once told me that “the only people who make mistakes are people who make decisions.” Those words have stuck with me ever since. You cannot put more simply and elegantly the burdens of management, and how managers who are afraid to make decisions accomplish little.

Garnett’s words further helped me to develop my own method of keeping things in perspective, and I’ve tried to communicate it to those around me. Whenever I have an issue — a difficult problem, an unfolding crisis — that causes me concern, I say to myself, “Okay, Vic, tell me who died.” It’s simple. No matter what happens, there is rarely anything we do beyond our focus on team member safety that is truly life and death, and if I can keep things in that perspective, I can think more clearly and make more effective decisions.

FF: Decision making is the key to good management? How so?

Stewart: Isn’t that what managers do? They gather information by researching and asking questions, review their options, and decide the best course of action.

Sometimes, of course, the course chosen is the wrong one. We’re human, and we all make mistakes. But if, when we make a decision that turns out to be wrong, we remember exactly why we made it, we can learn from it and not repeat the mistake.

FF: Sounds like mentoring is an important quality in a manager.

Stewart: It certainly is. Not as much from the technical standpoint. We are all capable of learning the job, what our responsibilities are, how we should carry them out. Practices such as keeping things in proper perspective, using the same processes to make decisions whether a run-of-the-mill, day-to-day issue or an important strategic one, not fearing leaving your fingerprints on a decision, and taking responsibility and ownership of what you do. That’s what I try to instill in my staff, and what I hope they’ll pass on to those who work for them.

FF: Going back to fleet management for a moment, how has it changed over the years?

Stewart: It seems to me that it has evolved into a bigger-picture process. That could be because my own career has progressed, and I’m no longer involved on a day-to-day basis. However, it seems more of a strategic, rather than a tactical, process today than it was 15 years ago.

FF: How so?

Stewart: Rather than managing a series of individual assets — this truck, that car — fleet management is more management of the overall asset. Not thousands of $20,000 trucks, but a large, multi-million dollar corporate asset. This kind of outlook encourages strategic thinking, how to leverage the full volume of the fleet with suppliers. Not that the daily activity that occurs in fleet is ignored, but the bigger picture has now been added — management, rather than administration only.

FF: Has this led to more involvement at the senior management level in what goes on in the fleet department?

Stewart: Without question, strategic thinking at the fleet management level creates more opportunities for communication at the most senior levels. Senior managers are trained to think strategically. When the fleet department communicates this way, more things get done, and done faster.

We try to relate, whenever possible, how what happens in our fleet impacts AAP’s business overall. How our costs and controls over them affect the company’s earnings per share. That’s where the rubber meets the road, pun intended. We are all ultimately responsible to those who provide us the funds we need to operate and to provide them with the maximum return on their investment.

FF: What do you see as the big issues fleets will face going forward?

Stewart: One obvious answer is fuel costs. Although the price of a gallon of gasoline or diesel fuel will rise and fall, the clear trend overall is up, up, up, and fleet managers are learning that if they don’t deal with it now, it can become a real burden. A second area of concern is the environment. We’re all concerned with what we put into the air we breathe, and we’ve got more than 6,000 vehicles doing it every day. As fleet executives, we must develop strategies to minimize our environmental impact. A third issue is our management of risk. With as many light-duty trucks as we have, the risk of liability and physical damage is multiplied. We’ve got to make certain our drivers are properly screened and trained regularly to drive safely. Not only is this an economic issue, but we have a responsibility to protect our drivers, as well as the general public among whom they’ll be driving.

Vic Stewart (left) celebrates his award as 2007 Fleet Executive of the Year with Carol Davies, fleet manager and the “driving force” behind implementing AAP fleet strategies, according to Stewart.

FF: What role do you see technology playing in these changes?

Stewart: Technology will indeed play a role; however, only as a tool. The key to managing change isn’t in technology. It is in the three-step process that we use to be successful: thinking strategically, developing tactics to achieve our strategic goals, and carrying out the plan. To accomplish this, you must have a supportive and talented team, and we have that in spades. I could not ask for a more talented team than Carol and her staff. The other piece of the puzzle is in the development of great partnerships with our suppliers. We don’t look at our fleet suppliers as simply conduits to the services we need to manage the fleet. They are, and have been, true partners, who are involved every step of the way as we engage in strategic planning and develop our tactics, and ultimately they provide us with key tools to carry out the plan.

FF: All in all, it sounds as if you’re enjoying yourself.

Stewart: I certainly am. I’ve been blessed with a great team, senior managers who give me the authority to make decisions and support my efforts, and suppliers who work hard at partnering with us. I love what I do for a living, and one can’t ask for much more than that.