HOUSTON – Vic Stewart, VP, corporate purchasing for Advance Auto Parts, was named 2007 Fleet Executive of the Year in Houston May 6. Stewart supervises a 15-member fleet team that manages a 7,200-plus vehicle fleet. Advance Auto Parts is headquartered in Roanoake, Va. The Fleet Executive of the Year award is presented by Fleet Financials and sponsored by CEI. In 2006, the Advance Auto Parts fleet grew by 18 percent, from 6,100 units to more than 7,250, with no staff increase. Stewart and his team worked internally with the company’s transportation department and an outside vendor to execute an equipment purchase-leaseback that generated $3 million in revenue for Advance in the fourth quarter of 2006. Stewart’s team also worked with the company’s AAP risk management and commercial sales teams to develop and implement a safety program, resulting in a 10-percent reduction in accident claims per commercial delivery truck in 2006 versus 2005. The program led to an operating cost avoidance of more than $2 million. Because out-of-stock purchases drove up costs, the team restructured acquisition processes and reduced stock purchases from 11 percent to 3 percent from 2004 to 2005, to less than 1 percent in 2006, resulting in a two-year savings of more than $50,000. Working with manufacturers, the team expanded the company’s light-duty truck pool, providing new vehicles within four weeks and achieved 99-percent on-time delivery in 2006. For the second consecutive year, Stewart led his corporate purchasing/fleet team to a negotiated savings target of more than $20 million, achieving $24 million in negotiated annualized savings, of which 40 percent was fleet-related. Stewart’s team changed the company’s vehicle replacement procedures to include license plate transfers by the delivering dealer to the new vehicle on all future vehicle replacements in states that allow this practice, resulting in savings for the company. The team continued to architect the company’s fuel strategy and executed bulk diesel fuel contracts for more than 3.5 million gallons of diesel fuel.