Merchants Fleet has entered a multi-year strategic partnership with Ridecell and their Ridecell 360 fleet platform to optimize the management of the company's short-term fleet, the companies announced. The goal of the partnership is to enhance operational efficiency and employee productivity to support its continued growth in the short-term leasing sector.

Merchants and Ridecell began working together less than a year ago, and within that time, Ridecell was able to integrate multiple systems increasing Merchants' employee productivity.

Merchants' short-term leasing division supports diverse clients, including corporate fleets, last-mile delivery companies, seasonal businesses, and mobile service providers.

Primarily composed of light-duty vehicles such as vans, trucks, and passenger vans, Merchants' short-term lease offerings are designed to meet the ebb and flow of seasonal last-mile and short-haul delivery vehicle demands, with rentals typically ranging from a few weeks up to a year. As demand for short-term leasing surged, Merchants recognized the opportunity to enhance its operational efficiency.

Inefficiency in Existing Systems

While functional, the existing tools and processes — spread across multiple systems such as CRMs, lease management software, transportation systems, and spreadsheets— became increasingly inefficient and time-consuming.

This realization drove the Merchants team to explore a new solution to streamline workflows and enable faster response times. The challenge was expanding the team or implementing a solution that offered the visibility and automation needed for rapid, accurate business decisions.

With Ridecell 360, Merchants was able to streamline operations, integrate multiple internal and vendor systems, and significantly improve scalability and efficiency.

"Ridecell's platform allows us to be more effective and efficient by helping us bring together data from multiple systems and enabling better decision-making. For instance, vehicle remarketing decisions. When a vehicle is offboarded, the system automatically tags it for resale or redeployment back into the fleet based on pre-configured rules, a process that was previously managed manually through spreadsheets," Brad Burgess, interim co-CEO of Merchants Fleet, said.

With the Ridecell 360's ability to process large volumes of fleet data, Merchants can automate and optimize asset management through real-time diagnostics data, which ensures vehicles are running at peak performance.

Ridecell also supports transportation logistics by providing a linear workflow that tracks the status of every vehicle in the fleet — from deployment to maintenance — ensuring seamless coordination. By automating these processes, Merchants can reduce operational complexities and improve responsiveness to better meet the needs of their clients.

Plans for the Future

The deployment of Ridecell technology primarily focuses on operational efficiency, reducing costs, improving asset utilization and employee productivity, and positively impacting financial metrics such as return on tangible equity (ROTE) and cost-income ratio.

"Merchants Fleet is at the forefront of the mobility revolution, and we are thrilled to support their vision with our fleet orchestration technology," Aarjav Trivedi, CEO of Ridecell, said. "Our platform is designed to integrate with existing systems and provide a unified view of fleet operations, helping Merchants optimize their processes and scale their fleet without the growing pains that typically come with expansion."

Looking ahead, Merchants Fleet and Ridecell are focusing on visionary advancements like on-demand vehicle rentals at stations, predictive maintenance powered by telematics and AI, live tracking for transportation functions, and dynamic supply and demand management.

These innovations aim to integrate short- and long-term fleet management, meeting evolving client needs while enhancing efficiency and operational visibility.