Inside the Tennis-Ball-Bounce Economic Recovery [Commentary]
Most major freight indexes continued to advance last month, but the economy may not be as healthy as we would hope.
Most major freight indexes continued to advance last month, but the economy may not be as healthy as we would hope.
A perennial factor exerting upward pressure on replacement tire costs is the adoption of larger diameter tires and unique tire sizes. The increase in OEM automobile wheel diameters has driven up the price of fleet replacement tires, primarily because the larger the tire, the greater the manufacturing expense.
The trend has been to extend PM intervals due to the use of longer-lasting synthetic motor oils, but during the COVID lockdown many fleet vehicles were idled, decreasing miles driven, causing PM compliance to diminish.
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused the absence of fleet drivers when exposed to SARS-CoV-2 and quarantined. When fleet vehicles are idle during driver absence, proper maintenance ensures their performance when they are active again.
Scott Ensor is all in for helping develop newer, safer ways to operate during the pandemic.
The price of fuel is impacted by many variables making predictions difficult. However, there are certain variables that are in play today, which allows us to extrapolate and extend those trend lines into the next calendar-year and interpret possible outcomes.
Reduced tire demand and a decrease in overall miles driven have caused tire manufacturing volume to decline in 2020, creating a downstream ripple effect softening commodity prices for natural rubber, but this may change in 2021.
Although unscheduled maintenance increased due to extended service lives, prolonged inactivity during the COVID lockdown, and longer downtime due to parts shortages, costs were flat as vendors refrained from price increases.
For the past decade, more OEMs are recommending the use of more expensive synthetic motor oils, which is increasing the cost of each PM service. But the higher quality motor oil also allows the intervals between these services to lengthen, which is offsetting some of the additional per-transaction costs.
Lee Pierce of Nutrien Ag Solutions was honored at the virtual 2020 AFLA NextGen Conference for implementing fleet restructuring initiatives at her company and her overall achievements in the industry.
The COVID-19 pandemic divided the fleet market into essential and non-essential businesses, causing hundreds of thousands of company vehicles to sit idle from mid-March to mid-May. The economic shutdown caused miles-driven to plummet.
One trend that is gaining momentum among commercial fleets during the pandemic is the use of mobile maintenance vendors. There has been a substantial uptick in fleet requests for mobile maintenance solutions as fleet managers look to minimize downtime and the administrative burden of taking their vehicle to a repair shop and having the driver wait.
Yogi Shivdasani was honored with the Fleet Executive of the Year award at the 2020 AFLA NextGen Conference for implementing data and scalable processes to make his fleet run more efficiently.
Three fleets weigh in on how this digital asset can help operations run smoother.
Last-mile operations place special demands on the tires used on light- and medium-duty delivery vehicles.
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