Episode 052: NAFA 2022 Recap + FSS 2022 Preview

Hey everyone, Josh here from the Fleet Success Show. I wanted to just take a second and make sure you know about the first of its kind Fleet Success Summit. It's happening right here in Phoenix, Arizona on April 20th and 21st. This is a— it's a two-day event. It'll be unlike anything you've ever seen before in the world of fleet. We're bringing in 12 speakers to the stage to share the best in business, leadership, culture, and technology, not just from fleet, but other industries as well. All to help you drive success in your fleet. Go out, grab your tickets, register to attend at fleetsuccesssummit.com. And if you enter the code PODCAST at checkout, you'll get a 15% discount. We really hope to see you there. This is going to be an amazing 2 days. Go sign up now. fleetsuccesssummit.com.

Welcome to the Fleet Success Show, a podcast dedicated to talking about the fundamentals, standards, and best practices services that empower today's fleets to achieve fleet success. Let's get into the show. All right.

Welcome back for another episode of the Fleet Success Show. I'm your host, Josh Turley. And joining me today, Jeff Jenkins.

Hey, it's the travel.

It is. It's finally getting to me, I think.

Yeah. I mean, you know, a fun 6 days in Columbus, Ohio.

Hey, you know, Columbus was nice, though. I really did enjoy Columbus. It's a fun little city. It has like a little bit of everything from everywhere.

That is true, although I could have done without the first couple days when it was cold. I mean, I didn't leave Arizona in the 80-degree weather to go to 30-degree weather.

I would agree. But something I learned about the Midwest through this spring is that Midwest is just— they don't understand what season it is. Because when we were in Indianapolis, the same thing happened. It started off at 70, and then the next day it was 30, and then it was back up to 70. It's like, well, is this spring or is this winter? It's like Couldn't quite figure it out.

It makes it hard for wardrobe planning.

Yes, it does. I had to bring my heavy jacket and my light jacket. I ain't got room for that in my suitcase. Come on now.

Oh, carry-ons, right?

Yeah, especially when in Arizona it's just like, it's either spring, summer, summer, summer, and maybe a little bit of fall.

So basically you're saying shorts, shorts, or shorts?

Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, I get away with shorts every day. Yeah. You know, maybe a couple days you have to throw on the jeans just in case.

That's just for a wedding.

But yeah, no, it definitely, uh, gave me some appreciation for what you guys go back through over there. You know, 40-degree swings in one day is just nuts. Yeah, we'll see 20 degrees when it rains, but that's it, and that's right back to where it came from.

Yeah, but typically we're already starting so hot that our 20-degree swing isn't so bad.

It's beautiful. Like, we appreciate that. So today, Steve is out today, um, attended some family matters, but we will get him back here on the podcast soon. I can't wait to have him back on. Uh, this week we recap, we just finished up with NAPA as we were talking about being over at Columbus for the, uh, I&E 2022. Um, it was, you know, interesting as they were trying to get back on their cadence, right? They had to shift to from a spring show to an October show. Last year.

Yep.

October, November, something like that, uh, when they were in Pittsburgh. And so they were doing this, you know, only about 7 or 8 months after their last show, which is, you know, it's a bit of a tight turnaround.

They did a good job though.

I thought it was set up very well considering.

Yep.

You know, could have been— it could have gone really bad, but they, you know, you wouldn't have known that it was such a short turnaround.

Yep, I agree.

I felt like this one was a little bit better attended than the one in Pittsburgh.

Yes, I would agree with that.

Um, And it definitely felt like, you know, it was kind of things were getting back to normal. You know, I remember in Pittsburgh, like, it was very much, you know, every day you had to walk in and do that little Axel Pass app. And this time it was a little bit more, hey, you got through it once and you're good to go for the rest of the week. So things definitely felt like they were more open and kind of getting back to the new normal, you know, whatever we're calling this thing.

Yeah, well, and it was great too because there were more people there. They had activities, which they didn't really have last time. They had one activity.

More of the downtown restaurants were open.

Yeah. Which was great.

Whereas when we were in Pittsburgh, it was like, you know, the downtown scene was totally shut down. And that was actually a lot of fun being able to walk up and down the street. And like, it was nice weather. It wasn't too cold other than when it was raining.

Yep.

But, you know, it was interesting as we were going through, you know, I like to attend the sessions. We went out and we had the DOT session on the first day, which I thought was well attended. You know, even though you did put me to sleep, like I said in last week's episode, but the, you know, the rest of the show really, you know, I thought what, went well. I got a lot of good feedback on the sessions I hosted, which I tell you what, like, I enjoy doing that more than anything in the world, is getting up there on stage and talking to people.

And you can actually see that too, of how much you enjoy it, which is great because you can always tell when someone's nervous or they don't want to be up there, but you thrive and your energy comes through. And I only attended one of your two sessions, but it was fantastic. And I, and I was looking around as you were talking and people were very engaged, which was nice. What I liked about your session as well is you made it a point to get the audience engaged, to ask questions, right, as you were going along. Some of the other sessions that I attended struggled with that a little bit. A lot a bit. Yeah, it was just them talking.

Yeah. And you could definitely see where, you know, and it's not like I've gone through and had any formal education on that. It's more of a natural thing. But some coaching like this is something that I would work with if I was having some of my people go out and present. Some coaching to help them become more natural presenters, right, would definitely help, I think. But for the most part, you know, I thought that they did a good job. I mean, these are fleet managers. We're not, you know, professional presenters or speakers. We had some of those, the keynotes. I thought some of the keynotes were entertaining. OPP was fun. I'll always remember that. From the keynote.

You down with OPP?

I don't know the rest of this. Yeah, you know me.

Naughty by nature.

So then I thought one of the things that was interesting is all the classes I went to, I went to one that was on employee retention, you know, and how to recruit technicians for this new age. And the title of the class was like, you know, From Carriage to Computers, basically as technology has evolved, how are our recruiting processes evolving? And I went in there expecting that to be the topic, and I think you saw the same thing as like, no matter what the topic was supposed to be, somehow we always found our way back to electrification.

Amen.

Like, that topic came up in every single class, no matter what the class was supposed to be about. Somehow, and I don't know like what was going on, if it was in the water, if it's just because of the craziness of the fuel prices, Everybody's very, you know, they're talking about electrification right now. A lot of people are talking about it as in we're not doing it. But there's a lot of people talking about it like, how on earth am I going to implement this? Because I've got city administrators, I've got customers, I have stakeholders all breathing down my neck to try to manage the fuel price crisis. Well, and I think that's driving a lot of the fear and panic right now. In that discussion.

It is. And anytime fuel prices spike though, we go back to the same conversation.

Yep.

What's gonna happen is fuel prices will eventually start to go down again. And then once again, people will stop talking about it as much.

Well, the economics change, right? And that's, I think what happens is the economics change and people start reacting to the new economic situation. It's interesting is that the conversation itself hasn't changed that much.

No.

Right? And I've heard— I actually heard this several times during the week. And I thought it was the same person saying it, but it was a different person every time. But talking about electrification, and the easy part is buying the vehicle. That has always been the easiest part. And it's the one that's like the least of your worries.

Yes. If you can find availability.

If you can find availability. But you have the same problem with ICE engines right now, right?

You do. Yep.

Or ICE engines. I feel like that's redundant. Internal combustion engine engine. Anyway.

I see.

I see. Anyway, so the— what I thought was interesting was it still always comes back to infrastructure and working with your facilities people every single time. You know, as the amount of infrastructure costs to get power stations, to get charging stations, to get reporting capabilities and those kinds of things built into your grid to have the types of power support behind you, right, from your power company.

Yep.

Because they're not quite ready for this wherever you're at, especially if you're in a rural environment. There was a whole conversation around utilization and understanding electric will not be for every role. And I think that was a bit of a balloon popper for some people. They didn't realize, no, you really do have to do utilization studies and find out No, no, that's a heavy-use vehicle. That's 200 miles a day. You're not putting that under an electric duty cycle.

Nope.

Oh, you're 15 miles a day. Yeah, we could do electric. Of course, Mark, Steve, and I would all ask, and you would ask the same thing, why do we have this car if it's only 15 miles a day? Yeah. You know, we rented a car in NAFAA thinking that we'd be driving over, and I think I saw that car twice when I got to the hotel and when I went, left the hotel. It was one of those things like, oh, we probably shouldn't have done that, you know, because we're usually pretty good about doing Uber. And I think more and more we're going to start seeing that shift to mobility as a service instead of owning that vehicle outright, just, just as a part of a rightsizing initiative, especially in, in larger areas with a denser population.

I mean, you've already seen that switch a little bit. But, you know, as we're talking, it's funny because we're talking about a lot of electrification at this. And then all of a sudden that same week, the governor of California comes out and says, we're going to completely limit all new car sales that have a gas engine or a diesel engine by 2040, 2030, 2040, whatever. I don't remember what the date—

say limit or eliminate?

No, eliminate. So they will no longer be— you're no longer be allowed to buy a new vehicle that operates off of fuel.

Huh.

Everything's going to go electrification. And in my head, I can just think about all the things we've already talked about when it comes to infrastructure.

They're going to— they're going to have to embrace nuclear again. They— that's the only way that they're going to be able to do it.

Well, PG&E is such a mess and that's their main power source, right?

I mean, it's right. I mean, they, they have a massive issue over there in California. You know, like every summer you hear about the rolling brownouts and then the fires. And somewhere in between there, this, the same grid is supposed to handle this, this, this influx of, of cars that need to be charged.

I will say I did see something cool at the trade show floor, and this is the second time I've seen this one. Did you see that portable solar charging?

Oh yeah, I've seen that where they can set it up at a parking spot.

What is it? Beam, I think is what it's called. Um, so cool, the fact that it's just portable and you can put it anywhere.

Yeah. Well, and that's something that a lot of rural agencies really have to figure out, right? Is how do we get power when I've got a fire truck that's out in, you know, doing the wildland fires. We get a lot of wildfires out here in the middle of nowhere. How do we keep vehicles that are electric charged? You know, one of the cool things, RZR is coming out, you know, the side-by-sides.

Yeah.

They're coming out with an electric side-by-side.

Really?

Which is fantastic. Like, that's just cool.

That is cool. I didn't know that.

It's still a ways out, but that's one of those things, you know, they use those when they're fighting wildland fires to get over rough terrain and things like that that an F-250 wouldn't be able to do, right? And haul their gear and all that. But having that electric, it's one less heat source, less likelihood to cause another fire while they're out fighting the fire they're doing. But how do you charge that? You've got to have something that can run, and, you know, having a portable solar electric vehicle charger is kind of a cool deal.

Yeah, I agree.

So And it was fairly large too. Like that array, I mean, it's got to be big just to power a vehicle.

I mean, how many solar panels do you need, right, to power a house?

You know, I know like up in— I've got one where it's, you know, 4 or 5 arrays, you know, 4 or 5 panels each just to do a, you know, 3 kilowatt-hour house.

Yeah.

So, and that's without AC. But it definitely was interesting that no matter what the topic was, you know, could have been about rightsizing, it could have been about recruitment, it could have been about whatever, electrification came up every single time. It'll be interesting to see if that trend holds. You know, we're going to GFX here in a few weeks to see if that trend holds through the summer when prices, when fuel prices hopefully come back down, you know, after summer, after the summer demand hits, that we'll see kind of how what happens in the industry, you know, is electrification, is this its moment? Will it be here to stay, you know, like at the top of our minds forever? Or is it going to slip back like it has in the past? I have a feeling like this might be kind of the push it needed to become more forefront. I still think, you know, when we go back to a podcast episode we aired— oh gosh, it's been a few months— but, uh, you know, doing electrification is— I'm still pragmatic about that. I like the technology in the right cases and for the right reasons. I think being mandated to go fully electric is Yeah, that's not really my cup of tea. Um, seeing this shift though, you know, hopefully you're seeing more of the demand side, which is the side I like to see, is that pull, the demand side, you know, the market working to pull electrification along rather than, you know, it being forced. Yeah, like we're seeing in California.

Yeah, and not everyone can afford it. I mean, when you talk about fuel prices right now, how much more does it cost for an electric vehicle versus for a Yeah. You know, a combustion engine vehicle.

Well, I think that's why you got to be pragmatic and look at the economics. You know, it's not just fuel price. It's not. This actually came up in one of your sessions. I was talking about, you know, the cost of an electric versus the cost of an ICE.

Yep.

Like, that actually reminds me, you know, the old days we used to debate, well, should I get a diesel or a gas engine? And it was the same thing. Well, there's a $10,000 premium on that diesel, but you'd get 10 miles more to the gallon. And so it just comes back down to economics again. No matter what the, you know, the carbon footprint was of the thing, like it always comes back to, do you have money to do that thing and do you have the resources to do it? Well, and you had another session too that talked about, you know, training your technicians to work on electric vehicles. And I thought that was an interesting insight I hadn't heard before.

Well, it was. And that wasn't even what the topic of the class was. It just kind of went that way.

Was the theme. Yeah, this is the unofficial NAF theme, shifting gears. It was shifting topics.

It was, you know, and listen, here's the deal, especially with electric vehicles right now, is most of them, especially if you like, look at Tesla, who's the number one player out there in the market, right? They don't want people working on their vehicles. They want to do it themselves, right? Keep it under warranty. So while we talk about, are we going to have to train technicians on you know, working on electric vehicles? Yes, at some point. But that's probably not going to happen for a while, right? Because you want that warranty on them still, especially when it comes to first, second, third generation vehicles where you're going to have problems. So I don't think it's as big of a deal right now to talk about training technicians. That's probably much further down the road and it's down the road when you actually have a full fleet of them. If all you're implementing is 1 or 2 electric vehicles, why on earth would you ever invest into Right.

If that's it, like if your percentage is 1% or 2% of your fleet is electric, you know, like you might be spending a ton of money for 1% or 2% of your fleet. Even if they're all electric, right, and your entire fleet is that way, depending on your life cycles, you know, if you're running a 3-year life cycle, like I've seen some fleets do where it's basically lease and turn it back in, again, why would you ever need to train a technician on the electrical system? Train them on the easy stuff, but the hard stuff, just keep the dealer, keep it under warranty and send it to the dealer.

Yep.

They, however, if you're going to keep it, if you're going, if the tech, right, they're going to need it, right? But if you're going to keep vehicles longer than that period, if you're going to go into that 5, 7 year, then you probably will need technicians that are certified, that have been trained. Because there was a whole world that got brought up about, you know, they're going to need the proper PPE, they're going to need electrification training, and they're going to have to become electricians, you know, and understanding high voltage systems and what not to touch and when not to cross those two wires. You know, like we've seen linemen and, you know, electricians out in the field who are trained zap themselves, you know, and if you do the wrong thing, it'll be fatal.

Yeah.

We've had, you know, like one of our employees, their son was an electrician, you know, working on with some high voltage stuff and crossed the wrong wire. You know, he was 20s, 22 when he died. And so like now this is another hazard that we're bringing into the workplace, they're going to need training in order to— on how to deal with it, or at least what not to touch when they're doing the little stuff.

Well, that's the thing with electric. It's like, it's not like you're dropping an engine on you or undoing a bolt or something. You're really just touching a live wire, right? So that could be exposed because of like irregular wear, some, some part of the vehicle, like as you're going—

it's not your normal 12-volt system, 24-volt system.

It's not. So yeah, I mean, there's going to be a whole new like OSHA safety standards, all kinds of stuff that's going to end up coming out. I mean, there's a whole new world when this starts to get a lot more popular.

Speaking of batteries, so I don't know if you saw my LinkedIn post the other day, but I heard this joke and I wanted to share it with all— and I shared it on LinkedIn, and you know, I think I caused the whole place to burn down.

But was it a dad joke?

It totally is. It's a double dad joke.

Oh, well, let's do it.

So I went out and I checked my battery, and I found it had two lumps on it. Right? So sometimes, like, you check things and it's got lumps. Like, you got to go get it tested, right? So I went and got it tested and it came back positive.

Oh Jesus.

They're, they're pretty sure it's terminal.

Oh my gosh. All right, listen, I'm not gonna laugh. Sorry, I can't give you the— so one of our guys on the flight over told me to watch Jungle Cruise because he laughed at the dad jokes that were in there. I'm just going to tell you, I thought it was the stupidest Those jokes are the best. They were terrible.

That's why they're so terrible, they're the best.

Oh my gosh, I can't do it. Oh, listen, if you knew my dad, you would understand why I have the hardest time on dad jokes. Yeah, you know him.

Your dad tells terrible dad jokes.

They're so awful that every dad joke to me is just terrible now.

I don't know.

It's terminal.

You know what, Chirac is always feeling underappreciated. We always take it for granted.

Oh geez.

Oh my goodness.

I don't know, guys. Like, if you're listening and you turn off right now, I understand why, because you don't want to subject yourself to more of that.

All right, I got one more, one more, last one. So we're out in Arizona, right? And so we have a lot of Spanish-speaking here in Arizona. It's one of the things I love about our community. And so every time I get together with my Spanish-speaking friends, I like to tell them mucho. It really means a lot to them. You couldn't help but laugh on that one.

You've said that so many times, and I think every time you've said it, I've laughed. I don't know why.

Because it's funny.

It never gets old, right?

It's mucho funny.

Mucho mucho.

All right, well, uh, anything else we were hearing as we were sitting at the booth? You know, things that we were hearing from, uh, you know, the customers and prospects and just people attending other vendors that were there?

So I actually want to like just say thank you to our listeners. Because I had a lot of people come up to me and tell me that they listen to the podcast and that they appreciate the podcast and the things that we're talking about. You know, we sell software, Fleet Maintenance Software, right? That's why I go to the trade shows to talk to people about that. And I hear a lot more often about how appreciative people are when you talk about the 4 different pillars of fleet success, because it's not what they're used to hearing and being involved in with fleets. So it's really a a breath of fresh air for them to talk about something that can be relatable to what they're doing, but is not necessarily a primary function of their job in their minds as the way it's been taught in the past.

Yep. I mean, that's why we did it. It's kind of the whole purpose of why we started the podcast. That's why we wrote the book. That's why we've got our summit coming up this week, you know, essentially tomorrow and Thursday.

Yeah.

Is because of that. It's because nobody else was talking about it. So we felt we had to.

Well, but it's a great confirmation when people come and say something about it.

Yeah.

Like, I'm very humbled every time someone comes up to me and talks about something they've learned on the podcast or how much they appreciate it, or, you know, I wait every Tuesday for an episode to drop because I can't wait to hear what you guys talk about next. That to me is amazing. Yep.

So thank you to the listeners and thank you to you guys if you've stuck with us. This is episode 52. It's been a year. You know, we've had a year's worth of episodes come out, and I've seen other podcasts, they're like doing seasons, you know, like they don't do weekly episodes. They, they only do it for like a short little time, you know, because I guess it takes them longer to figure out what they're going to talk about. Maybe they don't speak as off the cuff as we do.

They're not as creative.

Yeah, I don't know. It's not like we put a ton of energy into this. We're way less sophisticated than you guys give us credit for, but It is. It's been a lot of fun doing this for the year and we're just going to keep going with it. So with that, I do want to remind everybody, I mean, it's like, this is it. Fleet Success Summit kicking off tomorrow here in Mesa.

I'm excited. Like, I'm a little nervous, I'll be honest with you. But I'm nervous because now I'm speaking and I'm presenting.

Right. Honest nervous, like first-time dad.

Yeah.

You know, like, what do I expect and how is this thing going to go? And we've never done this type of event before.

And it's our show, right? So you want it to resonate with people. You want them to walk away with—

How's the message going to be received? How are the speakers going to do? Is anybody going to get up there and just totally bomb? Hopefully, crossing fingers, knock on wood, everything goes well with that.

We've got a great lineup. I really have a hard time believing anybody that we've got is going to bomb. I totally agree. This is an all-star cast of just thought leaders. And so it's going to be great.

Yeah. So, you know, like we've got just a ton of people coming. I know I'm kicking things off tomorrow, you know, doing a little defining fleet success, talking about a lot of stuff you guys are familiar with here on the podcast. But, you know, Steve's going to be speaking. You're speaking, you know, from Fleet. We have guys like Mark Rogers, Facundo Tesara. We have Paul Loria coming in who I'm excited to hear from. You got Mike Braband, who I got to speak with on Tuesday, which was awesome last week. Yep. Talking about, you know, using social media to advance your career, which I thought was a fun session. If you're not following us on LinkedIn, you should be. Missing out on awesome jokes like your battery is positive and terminal. You know, but I'm also really excited. You know, you've got Mark Rogers too, also a fleet background. I'm excited for the non-fleet people, which I think is where, like, it's going to be really interesting to see how these ideas all conflate. Ed Smith. I totally forgot about Ed. Sorry, Ed. But like, we've got Sam Bradford and Brett Gilliland, two people that are very non-fleet people but have, you know, dealt with a lot of people management, people engagement, how to get the most out of your people and your team while giving the most to them in return. I'm really excited about Kristin, Kristin Hadid. You know, I read that book and really enjoyed everything. As a fellow millennial, as somebody who's gone through a lot of the challenges that she's went through. It was fun to hear how candid she was in that experience and her stories. So I'm excited to hear her share some of that. We've been talking with her about, you know, the state of the industry and some of the challenges you guys are having specifically with finding techs and technician engagement and that kind of thing. So I know she's come with her A-game, ready, fully loaded to give you guys some awesome nuggets. So I, I don't know that anybody could come to this event in the next 2 days and walk away empty-handed.

Oh gosh, no.

I mean, at the very least, they're going to be fed well, but they're going to really come away learning some amazing concepts, principles, and even some tactics on how to implement them. So I'm excited for everybody who's going to be able to participate in that and hear and listen and be fed the next couple days.

Yep, I'm excited too. I'm excited to talk to the attendees, see what else, like other things are on their mind, maybe different topics for our podcast. Just, I mean, it'll just be a good all-around event. Like, I'm really excited for it.

All right. Well, that's going to do it for us today. If, you know, there is still time, if you want to come down and register tonight, find a flight, drive, whatever you want to do to get into town, you can go use the code PODCAST on our website, fleetsuccesssummit.com. If you want to do a last-minute registration, we'd love to see you. Even if you're in the area and can only drop in for a couple of speakers here and there, swing on by. We're going to be over there at the Mesa Sheraton, just next to the Cubs spring training facility.

So until next time, be there or be square.

Peace.

Thanks for joining us on this episode of the Fleet Success Show. If you liked our show, we'd appreciate your 5-star review. Be sure to subscribe anywhere you listen to podcasts and come hang out with us anywhere on social media at Fleet Success. See you next time.