At a glance:

• Name: Jamie McKay

• Title: Fleet Manager

• Company: Aptive Environmental, LLC

• Years at Company: 5 years

• Years in Industry: 19

• Fleet Size: 2,100 vehicles

• Fun Fact: When she’s not riding horses, she likes to use Google to collect random trivia.
  Like many others in the industry, Jamie McKay didn’t originally set out to become a fleet manager. Yet her path into the commercial fleet wasn’t from a completely separate industry – she came from car rental.  

With a background in rental, McKay’s career took an unexpected turn during the COVID-19 pandemic. McKay joined Aptive Pest Control as the company’s first-ever in-house fleet manager in July 2020. The role was previously covered through external consulting. Now, almost six years later, McKay manages a fleet of 2,100 vehicles – with 300 additional units entering service this year – for the growing pest control company.

When asked why she decided to stay involved with the industry, her answer came easily. “I can’t say what made me decide to stay in the fleet industry, but I can tell you that I’m good at it… I continue to learn.”

From Rental to Remarketing

McKay’s previous experience in the rental sector began with one of the nation's major rental car companies in 2007, where she honed her operational and lifecycle management skills. McKay’s 13 years of rental experience enabled her to apply those skills to Apive’s fleet program through lifecycle discipline and consolidation.

“This position has allowed me to grow within a finance position, a strategy position, and an operations position.”

McKay’s Structure Strategy

Aptive consulted with various FMCs before McKay took on her fleet management role, during which she consolidated operations under a single FMC.

McKay built on this need for consistency and opened an RFP process that initially focused on maintenance management. This effort also led to consolidating leasing and maintenance under a single FMC, enabling clearer visibility into TCO (total cost of ownership).

This wasn’t just about administrative management for McKay. It was about control, accuracy, and a disciplined system that prepared her fleet for long-term growth.

McKay’s Leadership Philosophy

McKay calls herself a strategic leader who emphasizes the importance of building trust. “Trust but verify. Control what you can control. Document everything.”

McKay’s vision for leadership is rooted in transparency with those she works with. She not only values this but also enforces it as a fleet strategy. “Transparency is so important… when conversations are held behind closed doors… decisions are made that may affect somebody,” she said.

McKay’s leadership shows up in other ways, too, like in her business relationships. “It’s relationships…building that relationship, finding the guys who will move mountains for you,” said McKay. “I don’t want my vendors to be just vendors.”

McKay values curiosity over ego, emphasizing the need to ask questions and not be afraid to ask them. “Ask all the questions,” she said. “I don’t think you can ever ask too many questions.”

Listening to the Field

McKay's strategy is grounded in feedback from drivers in the field. Many of her initiatives involve listening to those she works with. McKay’s early tenure included a variety of initiatives.

She added key fobs to new vehicle orders after learning that drivers were manually locking and unlocking vehicles at each stop. In addition, she added sun-line tinting to vehicles in Aptive’s warmest regions in the south to reduce heat exposure.

More recently, she upgraded vehicles with electronic toppers featuring electric locks, improving both compliance and efficiency during transport.

“I build these from behind a computer screen… when I can listen to what the team really wants, it just makes me really happy that it works out.”

Navigating Supply Disruption

McKay entered her role during COVID, one of the industry's most volatile periods.

She took advantage of the relationships she’d built to plan for Aptive’s long-term supply. In just one year, she intentionally over-fleeted so that Aptive wouldn’t rely as much on short-term rentals, which aided her company during delays.

After COVID, one of the biggest lifelines for fleets was OEM bailment pools: vehicles earmarked for fleet use that aren’t sitting on dealers’ lots but can be allocated and released when production and dealer availability are unpredictable.

McKay credits relationships for helping her move fast when those windows opened. “I lucked out… because of my relationship with them,” she said, describing a bailment opportunity for cargo vans. “I… gobbled up all the bailment as much as I possibly could,” which helped keep Aptive from getting squeezed out in a market where fleet managers were competing for the same scarce inventory. This helped her keep cancellations to a minimum compared with what many fleets experienced.

Safety First

McKay makes safety a top priority. Aptive is a service-based business, and technicians are operating daily in neighborhoods. McKay doesn’t let productivity metrics get in the way of safe operations. 

She used changing a tire as an example. Rather than putting the responsibility on one of her drivers, McKay outsources for professional help. This is a pillar of her safety approach and demonstrates her commitment to safety, rather than having employees change the tire themselves. 

In tandem with safety, McKay’s compliance initiatives also play a role. McKay’s addition of electric toppers not only improved efficiency but also ensured the safe transportation of materials used to control pests. 

Aptive’s Sustainability Efforts

When it comes to sustainability, McKay’s approach is defined by resilience and long-term growth. When asked how she defined sustainability, McKay’s answer included some outside-the-box thinking.

“Sustainable is building a fleet program that’s financially responsible, operationally resilient, and aligned with our long-term business growth.”

McKay also used another term to define her sustainability strategy: data.

When she first took on the role, the fleet was spread across multiple FMCs and billing systems. McKay combined various operations into a single unified system under a single FMC, creating what she describes as “one set of truths” in the data.

“It was probably four years in the making,” said McKay. “I was able to do a big vehicle retirement at the end of 2025.”

Lifecycle and Retirement Strategy

McKay executed a large vehicle retirement at the end of 2025. She worked closely with partners to evaluate remarketing options during this key time for her fleet, and she continues to play a leading role in that endeavor.

This reflects a financial lens that McKay brings to the role as she weighed cash infusion against resale potential.

From Fleet Strategy to Scenic Detours

McKay has collected a lot of national park stamps – 23, to be exact, although she’s been to more parks than that.

When McKay isn’t in her home office working, she’s either on the back of a horse or planning her next national park trip with her family. As a Utah native, she’s visited all five in her state. She even has the National Park Passbook.

“We’ve done detours just so I can get my stamp,” she said.

From lifecycle management to national park detours, McKay plans ahead and stays curious, always in anticipation of what’s around the next bend.