Professional fleet management is, relative to other business disciplines, still in its infancy. Though fleets of companyprovided vehicles have been around as long as companies have sold, delivered, and serviced their products, the full-time fleet manager has only been visible on the corporate scene for 55 years or so.

To many times in the industry, there do not seem to be many up-and-coming fleet managers, gaining experience to take the mantle from their predecessors. What has happened? Why aren’t more young professionals taking a career path which leads through the fleet department? It has always been an interesting, challenging, and rewarding job, and often has led to the executive suite. Is there an explanation?

Where They Came From
In the early days of the fleet management profession, companies sought expertise from the technical side. Fleet managers, more often than not, came from the automobile industry, as former mechanics, dealership personnel, service writers, and similar backgrounds. They knew about cars and trucks and they applied that knowledge to the management of the company fleet asset. Outsourcing, as it is known today, wasn’t much of a factor, as these pioneers bought and sold cars, authorized repairs, and maintained manual records to capture fleet expense.

Fleet management was done “on the fly.” There was little precedent upon which to rely, little data with which to benchmark, and not very many qualified staff to help; but companies had at least begun to recognize that company vehicles represented a multimillion dollar asset that incurred hundreds of thousands (or millions) of dollars in expense, and that full-time, professional management was critically important.

From these early staffers, fleet managers arose. They learned the nascent discipline from the original fleet managers and worked with them to develop and enhance the job’s basic responsibilities and techniques. Formal fleet documents were developed and implemented, outlining essential policies such as who qualified for vehicles, how vehicles would be acquired, how long they would be kept in service, and personal use. Fleet managers also developed lines of communication, both within and outside the company, with management, drivers, and suppliers.

These younger “fleet managers-intraining” began to come from several disciplines within the company; administration, finance, accounting, and operations were some of the most common. Each brought their own experiences and skills to the new profession and contributed to its development as a formal, departmental-level management position.

The Next Wave Steps Up
As the original phalanx of fleet managers began to move on or retire, they were replaced by those who worked for them, as well as others from the disciplines previously mentioned. This was the first group of fleet managers who began their business careers in the profession, learned the basics from the original group, and now were ready to take on full fleet responsibility.

While their predecessors were essentially inventing the job as they worked, this first group of full-time fleet managers had the benefit of more established processes, such as variable costs management, lifecycle costing techniques, and fleet policy documents. They also demanded the first fleet management services, creating a market that fleet suppliers eagerly filled. For the first time, fleet management was a true profession, as indicated by the dramatic growth of the National Association of Fleet Administrators (NAFA), through which they created job descriptions, networking opportunities, and educational materials and events. The career path began to take shape, and the tools available to fleet managers began to develop.

As important as this was the development of professional credentials. NAFA created first the professional designation of Certified Fleet Manager (CFM), then further enhanced the program into Certified Automotive Fleet Manager (CAFM). University-level courses began to pop up nationwide, and organizations in both the public and private sectors began to take notice. Recruiters were now looking for CFM and CAFM credentials when seeking candidates for the job.

Outsourcing Trend Begins
In the early ’80s, the concept of outsourcing began to take hold in the fleet industry as it had in other industries (e.g., computers/systems). The fleet management profession, only a few decades old, experienced its first major challenge.

Defining “outsourcing” as it pertains to fleet management can be an ethereal exercise. The original fleet managers, lacking many of the fleet programs taken for granted today, were “do-it-yourselfers.” They authorized all maintenance and repair activity, often bought and sold vehicles, and had clerical staff (the “next wave” described earlier) to handle administrative tasks such as registration renewal and driver communications. As the industry matured, services such as national account purchasing and, later, maintenance management, gave fleet managers more tools to better use their time, and provide them specific expertise.

However, the outsourcing that became popular in the early to mid-’80s went beyond providing tools for existing fleet managers; it included a relatively new concept, “total fleet management,” which, in essence, would replace the dedicated fleet manager. A supplier would set up a toll-free phone number for the customer, manage all driver inquiries, place vehicle orders, and handle all the normal clerical and administrative tasks the in-house fleet department had handled.

This more-extensive outsourcing was viewed as a serious threat to the profession, as fleet managers for the first time found themselves having to justify their existence within the corporate hierarchy. The result was that many fleet managers were forced from their jobs as companies sought to reduce headcount and focus on core activities.

The experiment with total fleet outsourcing produced mixed results at best. Companies found that their own needs often conflicted with those of fleet suppliers, drivers often complained about a lack of response, and outsource vendors had difficulty learning the corporate cultures of their new customers. Some companies abandoned the experiment, but the concept was refined and continues to this day.

Fleet management, as a profession, lagged as jobs became scarcer and many younger fleet staff sought other career paths. Some observers read this as the death knell for the dedicated fleet manager and touted a new discipline, one that involved not managing company functions directly, but managing the suppliers they hired to do so. “Managing the vendors” was viewed by some as the new paradigm. But, like many other management trends, this didn’t entirely happen, and some young fleet managers continued to come up through the ranks. Even with the changes in the industry, fleet management still looked attractive as a step on the career path.

Sourcing Initiative Brings Changes
As the fleet industry celebrated the millennium, there was another change in the offing. More and more, sourcing, procurement, and purchasing became involved in the fleet process, and that involvement began to extend beyond simply running the RFP process. Fleet managers found themselves, in some cases, outside the decision-making process for key fleet service procurement, while at the same time living with the consequences of those decisions.

A middle ground began to form, however, between the concepts of centralization and decentralization of the fleet function. The former surrounded leveraging all aspects of the company fleet into a central corporate function; the latter held that all company functions should be “pushed” as close to the customer as possible. A third way, sometimes termed “strategic sourcing,” held that while fleet management might be either centralized or decentralized, leveraging company purchasing power for vehicles as well as all fleet services was good business and provides substantial savings. Good business — unless the fleet manager was left on the sidelines when the final decision was made.

Many in the fleet industry have lamented the introduction of procurement into the fleet process. Purchasing professionals are trained and expert at reducing what they buy to commodities, an approach that tends to focus primarily on price, rather than value. Only a fleet manager can properly assign value to a potential supplier’s proposal, and they found themselves increasingly unable to find a place for their input in the decision-making process.

The Profession Evolves
In a relatively short time, fleet management has evolved from its birth as a new profession, populated by hands-on “car people,” to a more sophisticated management role and to face challenges such as outsourcing and the new role of purchasing. Certainly other professions experienced similar evolutions, faced similar challenges, and have adapted so that they continued to provide a career path for young professionals. But is this true for fleet management? Are new, young fleet managers coming up through the ranks to continue to polish the profession and add value to the service it provides?

Some lament that they don’t see it; that fleet management as a dedicated function in the company is a thing of the past. Others see the evolution as a continuing process, that fleet management remains an important corporate function; however, the job has evolved from a direct, hands-on process to the management of tools and suppliers who provide day-to-day administration.

What kind of job provides a solid career path for a young employee? What characteristics does such a job have that make it attractive to prospective managers and, most importantly, does fleet management have them?

The basic qualities that any job must have in order to attract candidates, particularly younger ones, are several:

• The work must be interesting. It must enable the worker to use creativity to solve problems, must allow some level of authority to make decisions, and must challenge him or her daily.
  

• The job should allow interaction with other people and regular communication. nThe job should pay reasonably well.
  

  Let’s look at fleet management in light of the above criteria.
  

• Without question, fleet management is never a boring job. Challenges arise daily on both a tactical as well as a strategic level. Decisions must be made both “on the fly” as well as with careful research and analysis.
  

• Few positions in any company entail as much communication with as many different people, both within and outside the company, as does fleet management. Daily interaction with drivers, routine interaction with their managers, corporate management, other departments, suppliers, and state and local agencies is a regular part of the job.
  

• Salaries for full-time, dedicated fleet managers are commensurate with other department heads.

  Clearly, the job itself is an attractive job for any employee, particularly one in the early stages of career development.

  But what are the qualities of a good career position? What makes a job a step forward on a good career path? Here are some of those criteria:
  

• The job must allow development of existing skills and the acquisition of new ones, particularly those that translate to other positions.
  

• The job must have a clear path advancement. The skills and experience the job both requires and provides must prepare the manager for promotion to additional responsibilities.
  

• The job, if it does not immediately require the recruitment, hiring, management, and retention of staff, should at least prepare the manager to do so.Once again, fleet management seems to fulfill these requirements.The skills and experience required of a successful fleet manager are myriad: financial, legal, human resources, operations and administration. Fleet managers must be excellent communicators, have a strong commitment to customer (driver) service, and keep a keen eye on cost control and reduction.
  

• No matter where the fleet function is housed within the company — administration, sales, operations, financial — there is usually a clear path up the corporate ladder. The skills fleet managers bring to the fleet function are easily transferred to greater reponsibilities. After all, one of the key aspects of management is the ability to make decisions and take full responsibility for them. Fleet managers do that every day.
  

• Fewer fleet managers have the luxury of staff as those in the past. The advent of fleet services and outsourcing has forced reductions in fleet staff that formerly did the job. That said, fleet managers do continue to have the support at least one staff. Even if they do not have any support staff, the requirements of the job can help build the experience needed to manage people as well as job responsibilities.

  Are There Young Fleet Managers Out There?
  In a word, yes. Sometimes, we don’t recognize them as such, since one positive step in the evolution of the job has been the addition of related responsibilities, such as travel, meeting management, and distribution. Many years ago, a pioneer of the profession, Al Cavalli, described what he believed to be the future of the fleet function. It would evolve into a “people-moving” job, a prediction that, in light of the above, has been borne out. Adding travel management, transportation, distribution, and other similar responsibilities to the fleet manager’s plate has been one positive aspect of the profession’s evolution.

  But there can be a downside. Increasingly, fleet responsibilities have been moving in the opposite direction, away from the dedicated fleet manager to the “supplier management” described earlier. As fleet functions are outsourced, there must be some oversight within the company to track the performance of those suppliers chosen. This development has often caused the company to eliminate the fleet manager position and give the responsibility to a supervisor or manager higher up in the corporate structure.

  There are indeed young, talented, and successful fleet managers out there and the industry will continue to provide them. We may not recognize them as such. They may have different titles and additional responsibilities, and work in different departments. However, the multimillion dollar asset we call a fleet will always need in-house management.