In this solo episode of the Fleet Success Show, host Josh Turley reflects on his grandfather’s 1990s seminars about mechanic productivity and draws connections to today’s fleet challenges. He explains how fleet standardization—using a limited set of makes, models, and model years—boosts technician efficiency by reducing tooling, parts inventory, and training complexity. The current global chip shortage and supply‑chain delays have forced many fleet managers to accept non‑standard vehicles, which erodes productivity. Turley discusses how to decide whether to wait for a preferred vehicle or to acquire an available, less‑standard one, emphasizing the Optimum Replacement Lifecycle (ORCA) model as a decision framework. He advises managers to assess where they are in the vehicle’s replacement window, compare total operating costs versus acquisition costs, and consider the long‑term cost of maintaining older, non‑standard assets. Turley then shifts to strategic planning, urging a 3‑to‑5‑year outlook and a “think five moves ahead” mindset to build contingencies for future disruptions, including legislative changes, EV adoption, and local political shifts. He outlines practical steps: anticipate a modest dip in repair productivity when non‑standard vehicles are introduced, document the impact, and plan to re‑standardize once supply chains normalize. The episode closes with a promotion of the upcoming Fleet Success Summit 2.0 in Las Vegas and the Fleet Success Playbook, inviting listeners to engage via email and social media.
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All right. Welcome back for another episode of the Fleet Success Show. I'm your host, Josh Turley, running solo again today. Today I wanted to talk about— I was going through some of the, the old seminars that my grandfather did, and one in particular, the first one that he did in his series of 8, focused on mechanic productivity. In his words, as he called everything productivity, is one of the things he was really well known for. It's how, you know, he kind of cut his teeth and saved UPS a ton of money. And as I was going through, I was taking all kinds of notes because a lot of the stuff that he talked about— oh gosh, and the seminar is probably from mid-'90s, but it's lessons he learned from '80s and '70s. And the idea is that some of the stats and numbers he uses, they don't apply today. You know, they just— they're out of date, they're obsolete. But the principles of a lot of what he talked about are still true. And so I'm going through and I'm taking all these notes because I'm like, oh, that was a really good point. Ooh, that was a good point. And one of the things that I, that I got and I'd been thinking about over the weekend was, you know, he was talking about the impact that fleet standardization has on productivity. I mean, really, like efficiency when we talk about that, right? Is productivity in the general sense of the term, if you're not familiar with this, but it's basically, you know, how much output can a single person do in a day? Right, like how many units of output. It's kind of a weird measure to use in a fleet shop, but you could think of it like the number of PMs that a technician could perform in a given day or the number of vehicles that they can manage. And so like his big thing with productivity was, you know, UPS was able to grow from, you know, a 30,000 vehicle fleet to a 50,000 vehicle fleet without increasing the number of technicians that they hired. Thus making the mechanics more productive, right? We usually look at things, you know, we talk about standard repair times and things of that nature. We're really talking about efficiency, which is, you know, if a job should take 3.5 hours, how long does it actually take us to do it? Well, one of the things, whether in productivity and efficiency are very similar, they're kind of like joined at the hip, I'll say. But one of the things that he talked about having an impact whether it's tooling, organization, you know, job process and workflow. These are things that we've talked about on this podcast before, but we didn't really— we have not really talked about the effect of fleet standardization. And one of the things that happens when you have a bunch of different makes and models, you know, this directly impacts your resource efficiency, it impacts your technicians. But the idea is that for every single make and model you have, every different model year, that you carry, you have to have inventory for that entire operation. You've got to have a technician who's trained on that new model year and any changes that they made to it. And if you've got a bunch of different makes, they're going to have different ways of doing things, different tools that you need. You know, this GM product is going to use a different set of tooling for, you know, their compression fittings versus the Ford's going to use, you know, like a different one for their retaining rings, and they just have different ways of engineering their products. And so as you switch from one to another, that means that your technician has to be more skilled and more arrayed and know how to handle a bunch of different makes and models. Now, that happens even if you're like 100% Ford shop, right? Like when you go from the Ford PPV to, uh, you know, just a run-of-the-mill Ford Explorer, or if you're going to, you know, Ford Taurus or You know, the Ford 500, rest its soul. But the idea is that, you know, as you switch between a Crown Vic and these different models, there are nuances, there are differences that each one has, but there's a lot of shared componentry between them. And so you can actually carry less stock, you can do less training because there's less knowledge, you know, like one set of training will apply to several different makes and models, you know, and shoot, half of them, they were using the same engine across different models. And so it's easy for you to kind of transfer from one to the other because you're dealing with a lot of the same underlying components. What got me thinking about it this weekend, um, I don't remember what triggered this, maybe it was, you know, looking at a recent tractor order that we're waiting on as getting a new tractor in. And the, um, what kicked me was the supply chain, was how just, you know, like we know there's been a massive chip shortage that it's hard for OEMs to fulfill vehicle orders right now. I know orders that were placed, you know, fleet orders that were placed last year, it's been like 8 to 10 months and they still haven't come in. I saw a really funny ad the other day. It talked about these, you know, you're going in and talking to salespeople at the car dealerships and, you know, they used to be like really just pushy, right? Like you'd walk in, they're like, well, what would it take to get you to walk out of a car today? You know, like, what would it take to get you into a new vehicle? And now they're like, well, you know, if you, if you signed it this year, you could sign up for a 2025, right? Like, it's going to take 3 years to get it to you. Um, you know, if you really wanted a vehicle today, like, I have this 2018 that you could buy, right? But because they have no inventory, like, there's just no drive for them to sell anything. And this is like, what happened to you? You guys used to be all these— it was a pretty funny video, you should go look it up on LinkedIn. But the underlying theme that I got from that, I think that's what triggered my, my thoughts this weekend, was What impact is the supply chain going to have on our fleet standardization efforts and what's going to happen to our efficiency over the next few years while that plays out? And I think it's going to be kind of an unintended victim of our supply chain crisis that we've been going through, right? Is that we're basically— we're going to get to the point we're drinking saltwater and we're just going to take what we can get. You know, we don't have the Fords available, but my GM dealer down the street, happen to have a lot come in and, you know, like they can fill the order and I need to get a vehicle on the street to replace some of these old vehicles. And I think the message that I was— as I was chewing on this was, well, what should a fleet manager do in this case? Should they wait or should they take what they can get? And I think that like every answer, it's the same answer. It's it depends. Can you afford to wait? Right. Can you afford to push off that vehicle replacement another year? Can you, you know, wait for a little bit? Have you been waiting for a year already? Is there an end in sight with your dealership? Are you getting the, you kind of the runaround of, "Oh yeah, well, you know, we don't know. We don't know when it'll be here," or, "They told us it would be here in July and now it's October." You know, how confident are you that you're going to have that vehicle be able to be replaced? And so I would tell you from that side of things, like if you're looking at the ORCA models, right, which is the Optimum Replacement Lifecycle, If you're looking at that and you're getting really towards the tail end where that maintenance and repair cost and the total operating cost is starting to creep back up towards the acquisition cost, if you're there and you know that like you just don't see an end in sight with your current dealer, the cost savings of having a new vehicle are going to outweigh any of the cost losses by having a a less standard fleet. Now, so I guess that's the bottom line, right? Which is it would be better for you to probably get a new vehicle than it would be to hold on to an old one longer. You know, but look at that, look at those numbers and calculate those two, right? And try to figure out like, well, how far am I into this replacement window and how far over the replacement window am I? Shoot. And I know because I've seen your fleets, I know a lot of you were over your windows anyways before there was a supply chain issue. Right. And so, and now you're kind of like, it wasn't an emergency before and now it's an emergency. It's an emergency of our own making, but here we are nonetheless. Right. So in that case, you do kind of have to take what you can get. With that said, what you do need to do right now, though, is start planning for the future. Right. In an emergency, you do what you have to do to get the job done. And us as fleet managers, that's what we do best. That's one of the things I love about this industry is like, whatever it takes, we're going to get it done. But as we look at it next year and the year after and the year after, we need to get back into that mindset once the supply chain kind of normalizes and these vehicles come back up for replacement again, is getting back into fleet standardization and making that more of an effort and having that just on our radar, right in the back of our mind. And thinking about, okay, when the time comes, you know, in 3 years, like, I'm not going to replace these with another, you know, if I'm a GM shop and I had to compromise my fleet and bring in Fords, right, that I'm not going to next year, you know, like when it comes up to replace these vehicles, I'm going to try to get back to fleet standardization, right, once the supply chain normalizes. And I think everybody's kind of on that boat. I just want to know, are we thinking about that? One of the things that we look at when we think strategically, and we think about, you know, like a 3 to 5 year plan. It's one of the things we recommend in our playbook, you know, is coming up with a, you know, like, what's your BHAG? What's your mission? What are you trying to achieve and drive towards? As you think about that, one of my favorite sayings is think 5 moves ahead. You know, as you're looking at the playboard, think about like, okay, if I do this, then the next move would be this, and the next move would be that. Uh, now I'll tell you, the further the moves get out, the less certainty there is that you're even have that option anymore. But if you're constantly thinking 5 moves ahead, no matter what happens, whatever gets thrown at you, you've got contingencies that you're thinking about that. Okay, well, I could move here and, you know, if we go buy these vehicles in 5 years, if I plan this, let's replace these with these units. But let's make sure that we're testing these assumptions along the way. That's what it means, you know, as you're being a fleet manager, to think strategically, to think about how do all my moves make sense as a cohesive picture, right? An artist doesn't just keep throwing brushstrokes on the, on the picture and hoping that they turn into something. I guess maybe some artists do. I've seen some pretty crazy art where they like throw the paint against the wall. But most artists, like, they begin with the end in mind, or they think about Okay, if I put my brushstroke here and put another one here, they have a picture, they have something they're trying to fulfill, they have a vision they're trying to create. And that's really, as you're a fleet manager and you're dealing with things like supply chain crisis and you're dealing with things like, how do I generate a more efficient fleet? You got to be thinking about how do these brushstrokes all come together to create that cohesive picture and be thinking 5 moves ahead and looking at, you know, if I do these 5 brushstrokes now, does that limit me in the future? So in this case, you've had to drink the salt water and take what you can get. Shoot, I saw people, they were buying used vehicles, right? And we know what that's like. Just make sure you're planning, you know, make sure you're planning ahead and thinking about— no, nobody's going to be able to predict the next global pandemic, you know, but we can think about things that we have seen in the past and we learn from the past. And, you know, what happens when the next election comes around? Is there any impact from that? And Don't think globally, think locally, right? Like what happens if the, you know, if we have a different party in power at our local state governments? What happens at our local city governments? You know, what happens when, you know, there's a new legislation package that passes and it affects us in trucking? What happens when, you know, the new, you know, EV push gets pushed down and, you know, like the sale of gasoline engines is banned? How do we cope with that, right? Be looking ahead and thinking about those things so that when you have a fleet standardization issue come up, you're not totally caught off guard. And you think about that now and you start making plans now. What ends up happening is, as you start making those small steps, you'll end up getting towards your goal one step at a time that way. And so in this case, as you've had to bring in these nonstandard vehicles, knowing and planning and saying, okay, I should expect to see a slight increase in our, you know, in our estimate, in our repair times, which means that my standard repair times and my efficiency is going to go down. My productivity is going to go down, right? And be looking for that and be ready to explain it when it happens. And then come up with a plan of, you know, but in 3 years when it's time to replace these vehicles or put them in a lower utilization role, that's the plan for this, right? And you come up with a plan. What's nice about that is you have a plan to deal with these things. You start looking like the hero. You start looking like the fleet manager that your people want to employ, right? I mean, you start really filling this role and taking ownership and thinking proactively about your position. So a short little tidbit from today, just a little episode as we just again think about the impacts of this crazy world that the supply chain crisis has created for us. And as I was looking through some of the the little tidbits of how do we improve employee efficiency. And again, one of the things was standardization and what's the, what's the impact that the supply chain crisis has had on efficiency through a lack of standardization. As a reminder, you guys want to check out our Fleet Success Summit 2.0 coming up in Las Vegas. It's going to be March 21st, 22nd at the Luxor, Las Vegas. We've got Almost all of our speakers lined up. I think we're waiting on the last one or two to confirm, but I will tell you, it's a powerhouse stack of speakers. These guys are all awesome. Some awesome leaders. I've got a couple personal ones that I'm really trying to rein in and hopefully we'll get them to commit. Some awesome leaders in HR and things like that. Again, people that you would not normally hear from at a fleet conference. Some of them you've heard from several times. You know, they're just, they're the experts in the field. And others, you know, this is us blending the world of business leadership, tech, and fleet all in one so that we're listening and getting new perspectives, the perspectives from people who've been very successful at what they do. And how do we learn those lessons in fleet in an industry that's been really neglected for a long, long time? When we started this last year, we really kind of used that as our rallying cry, like, Fleets have been neglected long enough. It's time for us to start really putting some money behind this industry and getting some more outside perspective on how to better run our organizations from the experts, right? And not just being an afterthought or a cost center, but really how do we drive value for the business? So March 21st, 22nd, go to fleetsuccesssummit.com. You want to check out some of the speakers that we have lined up already. As always, if you have any questions or suggestions for topics, you can email us at podcast@rtafleet.com. We would love to hear from our listeners. We know you're out there. You guys have been awesome as you've listened and sent in suggestions, sent in questions. We love answering your questions. And if you want to know anything more, you want to read the book, I mentioned the book a little bit, you can go to fleetsuccessplaybook.com. I will tell you is that the second printing is just about ready. You can go out there and and look for information on getting a second copy. And again, that'll do it for today. I'm your host, Josh Turley, signing off.
Thanks for joining us on this episode of the Fleet Success Show. If you like the show, we'd appreciate your 5-star review. Be sure to subscribe anywhere you listen to podcasts and come hang out with us on social media at Fleet Success. See you next time.
