Marty Kuhn has been named chief executive officer of Mike Albert Fleet Solutions, following a unanimous vote of the company’s board of directors. Kuhn, who joined the Cincinnati-based fleet management company as president in 2022, becomes the first non-family CEO in the firm’s history.

Founder Mike Albert established the business in 1928, and the Betagole family has owned and operated it for more than six decades. John Betagole, the company’s most recent CEO, moves to the role of chairman.

The promotion is less a changing of the guard than a formalization of a direction already underway. “My job is to honor what generations of the Betagole family and our associates have built, while making sure we keep getting better,” Kuhn said. “One of my guiding beliefs is that what got us here won’t get us there.”

Competing on Depth, Not Volume

Kuhn’s tenure as president has coincided with a shift in how Mike Albert positions itself within a fleet management market increasingly dominated by large national providers. Rather than compete on scale, the company has sharpened its focus on service breadth and advisory depth — what Kuhn describes as “the next generation of fleet management.”

“We’ve moved from a volume-first model to a smarter, more disciplined one focused on the clients we’re built to serve and the complexity they face,” Kuhn said. “What we’re building is a more complete, more accountable, more consultative partnership — in which a single partner manages the full operating complexity of a client’s fleet.”

That strategy has included expanding the services clients adopt across maintenance, fuel, telematics, and upfitting, with adoption of non-leasing solutions nearly tripling during Kuhn’s time as president. The company has also invested in its OverDrive fleet management platform, adding Single Sign-On and expanded API integrations designed to connect fleet data across the systems clients already use.

Kuhn is candid about where Mike Albert’s model creates the most value and where it doesn’t.

“Under my leadership, we’ve refined our ideal client profile and gotten more intentional about where we create the most value,” he said. “Clients with larger, more complex fleet needs are where our full breadth of services, data, and advisory model pays off most. The model delivers the most differentiated value where operating complexity is real. That’s our sweet spot.”

For smaller fleets, Kuhn frames the value proposition differently: fewer vendors, one accountable partner, and vehicles that arrive upfitted and ready to work. But he is direct that the consultative model scales with complexity.

Data, Technology, and the Advisory Model

Kuhn describes Mike Albert's approach to technology in three layers: OverDrive serves as the client-facing portal, the company's data foundation provides the intelligence behind it, and the client partnership team translates that into advice. The goal is to move fleet decision-making from reactive to proactive.

"The more connected the data, the earlier we can surface the moments that matter in a vehicle's lifecycle — before a small issue becomes an expensive disruption," Kuhn said. "We're not handing clients a dashboard and walking away. We're using better data to help our associates give better advice, sooner."

The company is also investing in AI-enabled capabilities, which Kuhn positions as a tool for its partnership teams rather than a replacement for them. "Technology should make a partnership sharper and faster, never replace it," he said.

Kuhn’s Background

Kuhn came to Mike Albert from SmartPay, a Cincinnati-based consumer finance and fintech company, where he served as president and helped lead a shift toward e-commerce and digital growth, securing more than $3 billion in capital. He serves on the Cincinnati Regional Business Committee and mentors small-business owners and entrepreneurs.

Mike Albert Fleet Solutions, ranked among the nation’s top 10 fleet management companies, offers vehicle acquisition and leasing, maintenance management, telematics, fuel, safety, upfitting, and fleet electrification services. The company remains family owned.