Episode 015: How to Pick an FMIS Fleet Management Information System

Welcome to the Fleet Success Show, a podcast dedicated to talking about the fundamentals, standards, and best practices that empower today's fleets to achieve fleet success. Let's get into the show. Welcome back to another episode of the Fleet Success Show. I'm your host, Josh Turley, joined by my friendly co-hosts, Jeff Jenkins. Hey, Steve Saltskiver.

Friendly.

Yeah, friendly.

I thought that was a weird way to explain it, right?

I don't know, we're gonna come up with a better adjective next time. I didn't want to say old and gray, you know. Well, that would only apply to Steve this year, right? All right, so today's topic, uh, one that's near and dear to our hearts, uh, we're talking today on recommendations on how you go out and pick and FMIS, right? Now, I just threw out an acronym and I always make a habit. FMIS for us is Fleet Management Information System. All right. So pretty much anything that you're using to maintain all the records for your fleet. How do you pick one? There's a ton of them on the market. There's a ton of different types of FMIS that are out there. But first, you know, Steve, you've been a consultant for a long time. Why is it when you guys would go out and do consulting jobs, you'd recommend if they didn't have one that they get one in place?

Well, we always— the first thing is if you don't have the data, you can't measure your performance. And so you got to have some repository to put your data in, for one thing. It's laborious to have mounds of paper sitting around trying to make sense of it, trying to sort through it, trying to— see if you're efficient or not. So that, that's the main reason is you have to have something to, uh, be able to analyze and see what your performance looks like, right?

Like you've got to have somebody collect the data that's relevant, you know, make sense of it all. I know when Grandpa first started off, you know, they were doing this all on paper. Like it was all pen and paper, right? And then you got to manually copy. Okay, this said 42 over here, put a 42 on this paper over here. Do all the manual calculations with your little 10-key calculator, right? Write it all down, and then you'd be able to get the numbers out, right? FMIS, obviously, you know, we're a long ways past doing that, but I'm still amazed when I go to a shop and like we're still using a lot of paper processes.

Yeah, a lot of people are still using like in a spreadsheet to do it, which is not really sortable, but it's not really queryable.

It does some things, right? But it, you know, it's It also means that you can go in and edit a formula or break a spreadsheet. I mean, how many of us have ever broken a spreadsheet before? Like, oops, Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+Z, right? Go undo that mistake and go figure out a different way. Or you struggle with a formula here and there trying to get what you want out of it.

And a lot of people nowadays too are using what I consider a quasi fleet management system information system, which are some of the telematic offerings out there. Yeah. That aren't really robust enough to really manage a fleet.

Well, that's kind of a good segue, right? One of the next questions is, is how do you decide which FMIS you want to look at? And I think we have to kind of define all the different areas that an FMIS could fit into, right? Like we mentioned, we were thinking about, okay, well, we've got— there's ones that focus on maintenance, right? There's telematics, which usually don't have anything to do with maintenance. You know, they're more about where's my vehicle at, how fast is it going? you know, and tracking the data on the vehicle.

Via location. Yeah.

Right. And there's a lot of them that will blend over, like they'll have a little bit of overlap, but they usually will focus on one area or another. Operations was another one that we thought, you know, I know in trucking especially, there's a lot of them that really focus on dispatch and route planning and load management. And they have maybe a fleet asset tracking side of it. But they're more concerned with certain areas. There are, you know, other systems that are really focused on the maintenance and the shop operations, but don't know about anything with telematics or anything with the operations of the company. So it kind of depends on what job you need to be done, right? Like, where is it that you're really struggling with fleet management, right? And that kind of dictates which system you get or multiple systems, you know, Maybe you have an issue with locating your vehicles and keeping them on the road.

Right.

So you may need one or two systems to solve that need.

Yeah, I think you need to define your business requirements going in and decide what you really need, what jobs need to be performed. If you buy a core system, I mean, you've always got the option to integrate other peripheral systems with that as, as you grow and jobs continue to expand. Those kinds of things. But I think it's important to, to really map out your business requirements going into that process, you know, if you're doing it blindly or initially as you're moving forward.

Yeah, it's definitely good to collect some information up front, but at the same time, take a step back, you know, once you've kind of surveyed the landscape, you see what's out there, you might get ideas on things you should be looking for that you didn't realize were pain points you were having, right, as you talk to different vendors. You know, and as you talk to not just the different vendors, but also I think it's good, talk to your stakeholders, right? We talk about stakeholder satisfaction being one of the pillars of fleet success. Don't just talk to, you know, like your technicians or, you know, your departments. Like, talk to everybody and find out where they're struggling, what they're struggling with, you know, what pain points are they having, what jobs are they struggling to get done. right? And make sure that everybody's kind of included in that process. So you have a robust criteria to evaluate the different systems by, you know, what's really important. Is it really important that we have a parts inventory? Well, maybe not. Maybe we've outsourced that whole operation to NAPA or something like that, right? So aligning that and talking to your stakeholders, identifying where their needs are, it will help you decide where, where you need to focus on for looking for an FMIS?

I like to look at the ROI, right? And what the potential ROI is when you're investing into something like this. And one of the things that I think is important to me is, is always been cost and making sure that we're running very effectively, we're low cost, we're preventing anything that, you know, we don't need to be paying for. And it's hard to do that. With a stack of paperwork. It's hard to do that on an Excel spreadsheet. It's hard to do that when you don't have that technology giving you the data that Steve was talking about, you know, when he answered that question as well. And that's always been a big focus on me. And that's what I feel is probably one of the key things that's most important when you talk about, well, do I need an FMIS or how I pick an FMIS is, well, what's it going to do for the ROI, the return on investment? What's that going to end up doing for me? Am I going to be able to save money or not?

Right. And I think you bring up the cost of, you know, managing the asset. Right. And what all goes into that? I mean, we know maintenance and repair is a big part of it. Operating it is a big part of it. Number one cost for owning a vehicle, Steve?

Depreciation.

Depreciation. That's right.

Yeah.

So it's always the acquisition cost.

30 to 65%.

Right.

Usually.

So if your goal is to make sure that you're maximizing ROI, then you better have a system that can track the lifecycle of that vehicle, right? And lifecycle of the asset to make sure that you're getting the most out of each mile and usage of that asset, right? Every dollar you pump into it that you're getting more than a dollar back, right?

I was just, I was just thinking as Jeff was talking about ROI and, and worried about paperwork, and I remember doing a bit, bit audit in California where the the fleet owner I was working for as a consultant didn't have a system. We were managing a bid audit with stacks of paper trying to make sure, you know, they're compliant with DVIRs, make sure they're compliant with all the DOT regulations. It was a disaster.

Pain in the ass.

Yeah, it was a disaster. I was trying to perform a mock audit, you know, and I'm pulling all this stuff together and asking all these questions of my my list and these guys are trying to find it in files. And that was a disaster.

So their FMIS was a HON, huh?

Yeah.

HON. Big old filing cabinets, the big metal ones.

Yeah.

I remember I walked into somebody's shop and it was, you know, I walked into their office and there was a bank that was probably about 15 to 20 feet long for, you know, the 4-cabinet-high filing cabinets. Right. And I asked him, what are all those? He says, well, those are my paper backups. And they had work orders going all the way back like 10, 20 years in these paper files. And I'm like, when's the last time you got into those? He's like, well, it's been a while, you know, but we're still doing a lot of paper processes. And I'm like, well, hi, you know, there's like a really easy way to solve this problem, you know? And that was just, you know, some of this is we talk about why don't people make the jump? Yeah, some of it's a resistance to change, right? They don't want to adopt technology. That's, oh, that's fancy. The way we've always done it.

The way we've always done it.

The worst answer you're ever going to get.

Oh, yeah. I hate that answer.

We've got a saying around here, right? Whenever we hear that, we pull out the shotgun because there's a sacred cow mooing somewhere, right? It's time to load up on some sacred cow steak.

Yeah, when I, uh, so when I took over for a trucking company and I was looking at some of this, you know, when it comes to, hey, why do we need a maintenance software system? One of the things I noticed is that for the past 5 years um, we had to write off at the end of every single year $100,000, $200,000 in parts and inventory because we didn't have an inventory tracking system. We didn't have something that we would check parts in and out. You know, I think that we had mechanics that, you know, we let them use— we had let them use our shop on the weekend to fix other people's vehicles or whatnot. And I'm sure parts disappeared on those vehicles that never were accounted for, uh, you know. And, and it was like, well, okay, we need to track this. We need to do a much better job. How are we going to do that? On top of that, You know, managing the workload for technicians. Are technicians being efficient? Are they being effective? You know, there's a lot of cost that goes into running a shop and running a maintenance program, and not being able to measure that and have the accountability to those things is, is a complete waste of money. And you're never going to get ahead if you're not able to do that in an efficient manner.

I remember one time you talked about how it would take 12 hours to get a PM job done. Yeah, like, you know, driver would drop it off and they knew they wouldn't see that truck again that day. Right, right. And that's the kind of thing that if you're not using a system to track that, then you can never improve. Right. There's a, there's a saying that what, what gets measured gets managed. And what gets managed gets improved. Right.

Well, you were talking about what's the biggest cost? Depreciation. The second biggest cost is usually people. Yeah. So if you're not— yeah, if you're not managing your people, And if you ever want to validate that, go into a corporate setting when they have to cut costs. That's the first thing they do is they either cut assets or they cut people.

Yeah, true.

Because that's where your bottom line is affected the most, the quickest.

Well, it is. And also, you know, it just popped in my head when you were talking. I'm sitting here thinking about, you know, managing a shop or maintenance. But, you know, when you have a vehicle that's out of alignment, you're going to run through tires a lot more frequently than not. If you are using paper, how often are you tracking when those tires are getting changed and what tire position it's in? A huge cost in trucking is tire cost. And a lot of that is from irregular wear. And we would, without a system to help us track that, you know, I mean, when you're dealing with hundreds of assets, an Excel spreadsheet's not gonna work.

No, you lose track of everything.

You're not gonna be able to do it. But I remember one time we had a truck and I just remembered the truck number in my head. And it was like the third front left steer tire that we'd replaced on that truck. And I don't know why it just stuck in my head, and I'm looking, I'm like, why in the heck? What's going on? After the second one, why didn't we do something? Take it in, check the alignment, do something different. But we did— we didn't have a good way to effectively, you know, have that inventory or have that, that knowledge in a system that's like, hey, it's flashing at you, hey, by the way, you've just changed this tire 3 times in the past 6 months, something's wrong.

Right, there's something— look at root cause here.

Now we had, we had, yeah, we had no clue. So if we, if we hadn't have recognized that that truck number we were changing tires that frequently, we would have kept putting tires on, could have kept running through them and never done anything to mitigate that.

Well, because you lose that insight with paper, right? Even with Excel, like, you don't have that kind of insight because the system isn't smart enough to, to look for that kind of thing.

Well, and usually the person inputting the data is not the person working on the vehicle either.

True.

So that's— unless that person who's working on the Excel spreadsheet communicates to whoever's in the shop, you're never going to know.

Right.

Well, that's a good segue into, I mean, root cause analysis that you just mentioned. If you have the data and you work on data by exception, you can start looking at your top 5, top 10 repair costs or vehicle costs and, and you'll spot things like that. And then you can sit down and say, okay, what is it? Is it a, is it a bad shock? Is it a tie rod? Is it a kingpin? What is causing this to wear this tire out?

That's right.

You know, is it a driver? I was in a fleet one time, a police fleet, where the driver was ruining the tires.

That would never happen, right?

He was going 100 miles an hour and then slamming on the brakes just for fun.

Yeah, it sounds like fun pulling donuts in the parking lot late at night. I get it, I get it.

Sounds like a missionary.

Please do that sometimes.

So I think the first thing that we have to look at, right, if we're going out picking an FMIS is what job is it we need to be done? Are we trying to nail down maintenance costs? Are we trying to do better with tracking tires and repeated repairs? Are we trying to control labor and productivity efficiency? Is there some lifecycle that we're not paying attention to? You know, we're not looking at depreciation and actual cost, total cost of ownership, which is something we call TCO. What else? What are other things that we should be looking at as we're evaluating FMISs, you know, against one another? What other criteria or factors that we need to be looking at?

How do we integrate? How does it integrate with other programs?

I think that's got to be key, right? Because if you have a system and it does one thing really well, but then, you know, you've got finance and they're using Sage or QuickBooks or, you know, NetSuite or something and you've got your fleet system over here, how do you make sure, like you mentioned, doing inventory write-offs Well, the inventory's got to show up on the balance sheet of the company. And so making sure that your inventory from your FMIS matches or is at least represented on the balance sheet in the accounting and financials, that requires integration.

Well, in trucking, you need to integrate not just with your accounting, but also your operating software as well. How you're dispatching your trucks, entering your loads, it's got to integrate with that. But, you know, telematics, are you integrating with telematics? Are you integrating with your whatever your fuel control system may end up being. I mean, there's a lot of different things that you can tie into the FMIS, which makes you overall, your overall efficiency better company-wide as opposed to just in that maintenance shop.

Well, and integrations are key because of that efficiency you just mentioned, right?

Yeah, it eliminates double entry of data and—

Well, and anytime you've got—

Consolidated reporting.

You've got time, but then there's also the error rate that happens with that too. The likelihood that you entered it correctly in both systems goes down the more systems you have to enter it into.

I've been doing this long enough, I remember pulling data from disparate systems to try and do reporting.

Try to mash them all up.

Yeah, try to mash them all together because they didn't have a key field or something that relates in the database. But that's a good thing too. I mean, now with integrations, I mean, now we're looking at Internet of Things integrations. I mean, there is an abundant number of integrations that are out there now that are helping people optimize their fleet operations.

Yeah. So, so you definitely want to make sure that whatever system you choose or systems, maybe you're out there looking at multiple systems, that they integrate with each other and that they have the ability to integrate with systems that you already have in place that you're not trying to switch out.

Yep.

Right. And that they have the ability to make sure that you can kind of get one seamless picture of your entire fleet instead of a bunch of different sources of record that don't match or don't talk to each other. One thing that I really want, like, I like people looking for, I like to make sure that we always consider, is the support, right? What's the support experience like? And this is actually pretty easy to verify too. While you're evaluating the vendors, try it out, you know, like, try— can you get a hold of them by phone? Is it email only? Do they have a pretty robust knowledge base, right? What's the support experience like? I know there's one company out there that they have a guarantee you pick up the phone and within 3 rings they're going to answer it, right? I know there's another company out there that does— it's 5-star service, right? That's us. But that's the, that's the idea is like there's, there's things in the support experience you should be looking at and make sure you're okay with that. If you don't need a lot of support or you don't want a lot of support, then that needs to kind of get lowered in your criteria, your scoring matrix on where you're putting the vendors. I will tell you is that most softwares I've ever used, I like having that support. Where I can reach out and say, hey, I'm trying to do this thing and I need help with— like, this isn't working the way I thought it should, right? And I just want a quick rundown on—

my grandson calls me a boomer, but the one thing I like is somebody to answer the phone. I just— it drives me crazy punching buttons and not being able to get somebody and have to wait a week for somebody to call me back. Because usually when you're— when you need that support, you need it now. Yeah, you know, you can't really wait because you're at a kind of a standstill usually with your system. You know, so I think that's a critical key when you're doing FMIS, you know, purchasing is make sure they have a good support.

Well, I'd agree, but I wouldn't just put— I mean, that's on any— that's on anything you're purchasing. So there's a— there's a trucking operating software company who is absolutely terrible at support. They, they don't answer their phone, right? If something goes wrong, they— if they answer the phone and that you actually get a hold of someone, they don't know how to fix it ever. They tell you they'll get back to you, they don't ever get back to you. I mean, it's a, it's a big company. I don't know how they stay in business with how shitty they are at everything that has to do with support. Yeah, like, it's amazing to me. I mean, their software sucks anyway, but like, their support is a big part of that as well. And I remember we were sitting there and something went wrong in our load planning software, and we couldn't figure out what was wrong. And we reached out to them and we asked them, you know, for help. After they answered on the 17th call, well, we don't know, we'll have to get back to you. That night we're still having issues on our planning and we couldn't get loads planned, which is a huge— I mean, you know, we're running 2,000 trucks, we can't get our loads planned. So we're having to write everything down on a piece of paper with what truck took it. So when the system starts working, you can actually go back and you can plan them on there and do it all after the fact. It took 2 days, 2 days of writing down trucks with loads before they finally got back to us with a solution. And it was something they fixed in less than an hour.

Wow, it just didn't escalate.

It didn't—

did not— no, didn't seem to care. But they're a big boy. They know how much it costs for their software. They know how much it costs to go get someone else's software. So I think they're just very— in their mind, they're like, well, what are they going to do, leave us?

Complacent.

I think that's something to think about too, is when you are buying a software, realize like, you know, most companies, you're going to stay with that software company for probably 3 to 5 years at least.

At least.

Yeah, it's And whatever this is, like the switching cost to go from one vendor to another, it's not cheap to implement new software.

We actually analyzed that once when I was a consultant. It's 10 to 15% just to change softwares because you gotta, you know, you gotta integrate the new software, you gotta train all the new people.

So you definitely need to do your due diligence up front. It's a challenge because it's quite the investment just in time, you know, just time alone just to make the change. Another thing that As part of the support, right? So you have the support experience about how easy is it to get a hold of them, get your questions answered. I always like having a good knowledge base. You know, whenever I'm doing, that's the first thing I'm going to look at is the knowledge base. And then I'll probably do a chat or I'll call them if I need to. You know, I guess that is maybe a boomer thing, but I'm that millennial, so I'm just constantly, can I Google that?

Right?

It comes up quickly on search. But I think the other thing to look at too is how often are they updating it? How much support is it actually getting? Throughout the year. Is it stale and old? You know, like I've seen softwares that they just basically put it on a shelf and they haven't touched it. You know, maybe they bolted it on. You know, I'm not going to call out any names, but, you know, they might have a large accounting system and they might have like a little bolt-on fleet module. And that fleet module hasn't received an update or a feature in 5 years.

Yeah, I've used one of those. It's painful.

It's painful because it's not a good fit for the operation because it wasn't designed around Fleet. It was designed just to check a box, right? So that's something else to consider. And also, it's not getting any new, new features. It's not— they're not listening to customers. You know, what does that feedback process look like? You know, do they have a public forum where you can submit ideas? Do they have a client advisory board where they listen to clients' input? And, you know, do they have a product management team where they're actively interviewing clients and trying to get better product fit for, you know, for the clients and their needs.

Certainly another thing you can do too, there's plenty of forums out there where you can get feedback, people using systems.

Yeah.

So you can explore those and see which systems are getting good feedback from the users.

Check for references. Yeah, that's a good idea.

You can go to various fleet venues that we've talked about on this podcast. Talk to your peers, your fellow fleet managers out there that are using a system or have used several systems, um, and they find out what they like and what they don't like too, right?

Because you might talk to somebody, oh, we use them and we absolutely love them, they're amazing. Well, what's the thing you don't like about them, right? Like, make sure you're, you're getting the negatives with the positives. Yeah, so you're getting going in eyes wide open, right? You're not looking at it through rose-colored glasses and making a sound decision. Now, Jeff, you've mentioned cost in a different way, right? Which is, you know, we're trying to manage the ROI of the fleet. But I think cost from an acquisition of the software perspective is also important too, right? There are systems that cost way more but provide you the same as systems that cost way less. Right. So making sure that your pricing, that your budget lines up, but that you're also not just throwing money at something that's you know, that you're not overpaying for the features, essentially.

Yeah, there's many different options when it comes to the cost. You can either, you know, some systems do a huge upfront cost where it's going to cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars. Some do SaaS to where you pay on an annual type basis. So there's, I mean, there's different, there's different ways to look at it too. Do you want to spread that cost out, or do you want to pay something just in the bulk up front? But typically when you're paying the bulk up front, also keep in mind that you have to pay support an annual support fee as well. So look at the different fees associated. Don't just say, okay, well, it's going to cost X and then think it's all done with, because that's never the case.

Is there cost for ongoing training? Is there cost for, like, is there an annual conference that they put on, right? That's usually something we get asked, you know.

Well, and what about mods, right? Is there a cost to, to put mods into the system to make it put in a feature that you want that they don't currently have, right?

Is that customization cost? Yes, the professional services, that kind of thing.

I was just thinking, I've been in a couple places where I was like the number one customer, you know, and you need to maybe investigate that because all the modifications are probably attributed to that customer, not necessarily you, you know. And so you need to investigate some of the due diligence in that.

I think one of the things, you know, talking about customization, you have to be really clear too about, are we going to buy a system that closely matches our existing processes Or are we going in with the realization that our processes might be broken and we may need to conform or do something differently? Right? Because I've seen that where companies will go buy a system and then they come to us like, hey, this didn't work. It's a terrible system. Like, well, actually, it's probably a pretty good system. You're not going to have any more luck with us because you're really just not willing to change your processes and it's your process that sucks, right? Like, that's what needs to be fixed, not your software.

Yeah, so I've been a part of 3 different companies that have changed their operating systems, and all 3 companies took an out-of-the-box, very functional software and tried to change it to be exactly like what they had in the past. So they just wanted what they already had. It just wasn't— it wasn't updated, or it was old, or whatever the case may be. And a lot of that is because, well, this is how our processes are, this is how we operate, so we need it to match us. Not taking that introspective look at it and saying, okay, well, maybe we're screwed up in some of our processes and this is the right way to do it. I mean, Schneider spent hundreds of millions of dollars on Oracle software system, but they tried to make it just like their homegrown system that they already had. What was the point of that? Why not just keep your own homegrown system, right?

It was already doing everything you needed it to, right?

But it just, it just wasn't, it wasn't updated.

Yeah, well, that's a good thing too. I mean, it's a good opportunity to look at your processes. Every process should be looked at periodically to see what the value add and the non-value add is. Right. Right, and it gives you an opportunity to actually look at it and say, why are we doing this? And the first question usually comes, well, it's the sacred cow again, right?

Right. Great time to bust out that shotgun. Exactly. You hear that word, well, we've always done it that way.

Yeah, George just did it and it's always been done that way. Well, he's not here, he retired, what happened?

Right.

So yeah, it's a good opportunity. You should take advantage of that opportunity.

Yeah, milk it, shoot it, do something.

All right, I think one of the last things that I always like is ease of use, right? Does it, does it function like it's supposed to? Is it intuitive? You know, can you look at it and kind of understand what it's doing and how to operate within the system? And it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be the prettiest, shiniest kid on the block, right? I know One of the things that our customers usually look for is, does it feel, you know, like with a work order, does it look like a work order? If I look at it, can I understand it? Does it look like something that I'm looking for? Do I understand how the parts module works, right? Like to kind of look at it and understand how these things work together, right? Or do I need to go through a huge amount of training and is it going to cost me a ton of time and energy to get up and running every time I bring on a new person, right? We just talked about technician retention. A little while ago, you know, what does it look like to onboard that technician?

Right.

Is there a huge amount of uptime or, you know, upramping time before they get up to speed or can they ramp up pretty quickly? I don't know if you guys have any other thoughts on that, but—

Well, every fleet management system I've used, I've probably used a half dozen of them. And that's the first thing you want to look at is how easy are they to to actually navigate around, you know, how intuitive is it. Otherwise, you know, you're going to spend a lot of time on training, and a lot of companies make a lot of money on training. So, you know, that's something you really need to factor into it. I know that we know companies that actually factor in training costs as part of their top-tier package, which can save you a lot of money down the road in those kind of cases.

Yeah, that kind of goes back to cost too, right? You know, is training included? Or is it a separate line item? Right.

Same with modifications. You know how much they charge you for modifications, right?

And you have to consider that because in most companies, training and travel are usually one of the first items to go whenever it comes time for budget cuts.

Absolutely.

Because it's seen as an unnecessary expense to invest in our people.

Yeah.

And so the really good systems out there will include any training resources you need as part of your support agreement.

Yeah, I mean, it goes to that ease of use, right? And it's— here's one of the things I think some people also look at. They look at to see if, you know, how pretty is it, right? Which, you know, I guess is okay, but guess what? James Buscemi, he's an ugly freaking dude, but he's a great actor and he plays great roles, right? You're not going to get rid of him because he's ugly. That's not the way it is. If you— if it has that ease of use and that functionality or whatever else why wouldn't you use it?

I think one of the things I always— like, I avoid trying to buy first-year model years, right? Like, with the first year they come out with a remodeled F-150. Yeah, I usually won't buy that model year, right? I'll wait till the next year because the next year is when they have all the improvements and they fixed it, right? And so, you know, going after the shiny kid on the block, they have to be careful with it. Some of them are really good, but some of them are not, right? And you can tell just because of how much time and energy they put into it. And what that support operation looks like and what the sales experience feels like. And, you know, some of them are very dressed up, but they don't have a lot under the hood. Others, they're tried and true V8 small block, right? Like, you just can't beat that. It's just reliable.

Unless it's a Butterface, right?

Yeah, I think that's something to think about. You're really on to something there because, I mean, how long has that company been in business?

Yeah.

If you got out and done a Dun Bradstreet rating on the company, you know, are they still going to be solvent? Viable. And this, unfortunately, this space we're in, there's dozens, maybe even hundreds of different fleet management information systems.

It's very difficult for people looking for one.

Exactly. So I mean, you want to make sure that company is going to be around after you purchase it. Yeah.

And I'd say, you know, anything longer than 5, 10 years is good, right? Um, I do know when the ELD mandate came out, man, it felt like things were just popping out of the woodwork, you know. Here in Arizona, when it rains, the weeds always come, right? But then what happens is 3 months later, after the rains are gone, it dries up, and we're right now, it's like 108 outside and there's no humidity. The weeds all dry up, right? And then you just have this brown landscape. And the same thing happened with the ELD mandate. We had all these little companies popping up like weeds, and then you went out and got your solution, and then you got left high and dry when they went under, right? Because they were making promises they couldn't keep. So you definitely want to pick somebody who's reputable, you know, who either has backing or has had a long tenure in the industry. And there's a lot of them out there, right? And there's a lot of them that are doing good work. So just something else to consider as well is how long are they going to be around? So, all right. Any last thoughts as we depart this topic?

Well, I do think that one thing needs to be considered is how good looking the sales manager is of that company as well.

Well, Ray, we have no hope.

So I would dispute that. That and say that it's probably a good option to go here.

I don't know, I've talked to that Will Yarborough over there at Fleetio.

I, I'm not talking about how fun he is to talk to you, I'm talking about looks. All right, let's just be surface here.

Next up, we're gonna have Will and Jeff doing a little beauty contest.

Pose down.

All right guys, well, that's going to do it for our episode today. Uh, we will see you next week on the Fleet Success Show. Remember to Follow us on wherever you listen to podcasts. Share us online. Share us on LinkedIn. Let your friends and colleagues know about it. And we'll see you next week.

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