Another year is coming to a close, and with it, we’ll also be closing the book on another decade. 

This has been an interesting year for the automotive industry, although its rare when that isn’t the case. 

From a more personal point of view, 2019 marks the end of the first full year for Bobit Business Media under a new ownership, and rest assured that it has been a good year of growth and change for us. 

I mentioned last year that while we’d continue to be the same fleet media business that you love, while at the same time changing in order to improve ourselves. I’m happy to say that we’ve been doing just that. 

We’ve continued to grow and invest more into areas we hadn’t focused on before. While much of this has been in the background, we’ll soon be able to share the fruits of our labor, and we know that these changes will help us accomplish our main goal, helping you do your job better. 

From a less personal point of view, 2019 has been an interesting year in automotive sales. Retail sales haven’t been doing so hot this year, with sales expected to be down compared to last year.

That’s what the analysts say at least, but an automotive market selling over 17 million units a year still sounds like a strong market to me.  

While retail sales have been down year-over-year, fleet segment sales have been holding strong, often helping to offset the losses that the OEMs are taking from the retail side. 

Thanks to the strong economy that the U.S. is enjoying, U.S. commercial companies have been able to invest more money into their fleets, and these strong fleet sales are a reflection of that.

This is a good timely reminder that fleet isn’t a bad word. 

If you disagree, let me know

sherb.brown@bobit.com