Episode 122: 100 Best Fleets: An Interview with Dan Zenger

Hey, welcome back for another episode of the Fleet Success Show. I'm your host, Josh Turley. And joining me today, I have the privilege and honor of getting to talk with a dear friend of mine, Mr. Dan Zenger, who's currently— what's your title over there, Dan? We're at City of Vancouver.

Fleet Superintendent.

Fleet Superintendent. All right. I was going to say Fleet Manager, but, you know, everybody's got a little bit different title.

Character is the same way.

Yeah, but, uh, so I've known you for many years. I wanna say probably since I first started at RTA, um, or at least, you know, very shortly after that. Um, you know, from, uh, the time you were at, uh, City of Walla Walla and City of Longview and, and now over at City of Vancouver. Um, and, and it's been, uh, you know, for me it's been a privilege and honor just getting to, to know you and, and being able to talk with you. Um, you're, I consider you somebody that is a dear friend in the industry. With that, I'm going to give you just a couple of minutes. You want to just tell people a little bit about who you are and what you kind of have going on over there at Vancouver? Because I know one of the things that I've really appreciated about you is your focus on culture. And every time I talk to your team, the— for people who don't know you, it's hard to convey this, but the amount of love you have for your team and the people that serve with you. Um, but in your own words, you know, I guess, you know, tell me a little bit about your career, your history, um, and, and how you got to where you are today.

Well, thank, thank you, Josh. Um, yeah, it's been a pleasure and an honor to be in your friend and being around you and your, your family and RTA and them over the years of enforcement. Uh, pretty much, uh, uh, over my 30-year career, um, as a new professional, um, pointed out, and let me take it back in time. You know, I spent some, about 10 years in the city of Ottawa where I was introduced to the fleet program and then was moved to a fleet manager position in the city of Longview, Washington. Yeah, I was there for 10 years and then moved down here to the city of Vancouver for the last 5 years. I started as a technician just like we all did. Some were dinking around with, mechanical stuff. You know, I lived in Pendleton, Oregon, and so, you know, farm equipment and tearing things apart, and then that just kind of led into my enjoyment of getting my hands dirty. I may not have liked putting them all back together, but, you know, well, that really gives me the history of that. Then on top of that, being a part of municipalities, it has introduced us— me to other fleet groups, and that has helped me progress in my my career. That leads me to where I'm at here, 5 years now with the City of Vancouver. We're moving forward with, with the operations that were kind of struggling, and we can talk about that, you know, later on in a broadcast perhaps, Josh. But I remember talking to you for the first time as a tech online when you were a tech missing once, twice. So anyway, that, uh, hopefully that gives enough intro into my background.

Definitely is a throwback to those conversations, you know, calling me up on when I was in tech support. Those are— that's how I got my start. So, and I definitely agree, it's always easier tearing stuff apart than it is to put it back together. Yeah, I don't know what it is, but there's just something about putting it back together. I always seem to break something when I— especially dealing with trim pieces or something like that. I always seem to snap stuff off. So, well, so what, what kind of inspired this conversation today, right, is the— we know the 100 Best Fleets applications just opened up. You know, about 2 weeks ago. And we're hoping to help other readers who might be on the fence or maybe haven't gone through the process before, help them, you know, our listeners understand what's involved in it, help get them off the sidelines and get them to apply. And anything we can do to kind of help destigmatize that process, maybe, you know, convince them to come in and just try it, what's in it for them kind of a thing. And so I wanted to, you know, kind of go through and you've done this several times. I know, cuz I've seen your, your name on the list several times, but, um, if you could give like an overview, you know, we'll call it like the 50,000-foot overview. What, what goes on like for the application process for you? How do you go through that process? Um, is it a big lift, a small lift? You know, like what does that look like for you guys?

So, so let me, let me back up a little bit. We'll, we'll talk about just that the application process for me, when I first applied, first of all, I heard about it as a young fleet supervisor back in the late '90s in the city of Wauwau at the time. I've heard about it. That's what it's kind of introduced. And so at that point, it was just kind of new. It's so much going on, trying to understand my role as a fleet supervisor and a fleet manager from the city of Wauwau. I went to the website. So here's what I'm recommending going forward for anybody that hasn't done this. Go to the NHTSA website. There are 12 criteria there that are outstanding criteria that would help you monitor people's pulse on your fleet. So what I did was, is I just, without knowing, you know, how to fill them out and put the answers on, I would copy that over into Word document. Copy that over to Word, and then you spend time just mulling that over, you know, whether or not you put in for an award, play with that. And then again, later in life, Longview, I was there for the 10 years. No, I was fortunate enough to be recognized twice out of the time I was there. And then using that same methodology, it allowed me to bring it down here to City Vancouver, where the last 5 years we've been recognized 4 times out of that. But each time in those criterias, it has allowed me as a fleet manager and my team to really keep a pulse on, on operations to enhance that, to better it, to put goals together. Again, whether or not it is your goal to apply or not, you can take advantage of those 12, I think it's 12 or 10 or 12 criteria.

Yeah, I think it's 12.

Be a pathway to your operations to help steer that ship because a lot of times fleets have a, you know, look at it as a ship and someone's got to be steering it. It's fleet, right? It's a fleet manager, it's a fleet supervisor, it's your team, right? If not, you're going to be bobbing around like the Titanic and you can crash into an iceberg. Right. Um, well, I think you as a fleet manager, my first indication, recommendation is get those out so you can play with them, read them, fill them out as though you're going to apply, but you may not because you, it's like I found out that, hey, these criteria, I don't feel like I'm at that point yet. We'll throw in an application. Yeah.

Well, and I think you said it right, but as the fleet manager, you know, like you, you have to kind of keep your hand on the wheel, but that means you've got to have eyes out looking forward to make sure that you're not going to crash the ship. Right. And, uh, and these criteria kind of help you steer and figure out where should you be focusing on and that kind of thing. Uh, so would you start that like, you know, like a year ahead of time or, you know, like how, how early in the process were you looking at it?

Well, what, what, what I would recommend is as soon as, if you get your hands on the copy of that, I would get, I would do sooner than later.

Okay.

So for example, the, the window just opened, go online right now. December 6th, and you can copy that over and start working away. I think that's only in January to fill that out, or at least just make a decision with you and your team to fill that out. Right. Like I said, even if you don't, you have that already in your arsenal of tools to look at throughout the year and to work on. So make that your goal because there again, you start your goals for your fleet. right, from some of those criteria.

Okay.

So, so it's a good thing for all fleet managers and fleet leadership to have a pulse on their operations because fleet is the hub. Everything kind of comes to fleet for direction. And it's good for your team and yourself to at least have a pulse on it in a direction so you can come with a couple of those answers, you know, and, and, Also, it provides numbers. Everything right now is a data-driven lifestyle, right?

Right.

I didn't see that years ago. It wasn't as prominent as it has been the last 4 or 5 years. But this helps drive some of that analysis in your numbers and your, uh, that you need to have in your hip pocket, at least ballpark estimates. But if you go into meetings where I've been kind of, you know, throw it out at the last minute, say, hey, how many miles have we traveled in here from, from when the police, uh, police leave or something like that? Well, I, that's a basic number because of, of what we're talking about. Just keeping track of it.

Do you find that as you've gone through that application process, right, you've got these 12 criteria in front of you, has it helped you, uh, like articulate more to council or, you know, to other stakeholders? What's going on in fleet, what you guys are working on, how you're doing, even without applying for it.

But right, right. It actually does. It brings credibility to your operations and your thought process and your methodology that you're, that you're bringing because of what we do. Because everything, uh, in a, uh, municipality, right, we want to be good, uh, stewards of taxpayers' dollars. This is exactly the fence that we want to put around that so we can say we are doing all we can. We're making the right steps to purchase the items, parts, new vehicles, et cetera. We're looking at, you know, different contracts, different ways to— that's best for the organization. You know, teaming up with procurement, for example, you know, and making sure we understand the auditor's part of this and what keeps us out of auditor issues. So there's a lot of things that this brings to the table, but it does bring that unity and teamwork within your own business.

Yeah. Is the, uh, from an applications perspective, right? You've got those 12 criteria. Would you say it's like, is it intimidating? Is it hard to come up with answers to that or is it hard to keep it with it? Cause it's like a 400 character limit if I remember right.

Yeah. I would—

Is that the hard part? Is being brief?

The hard part is, is I believe once you get going like I did, Before you log in, you kind of start typing like you talk. It's pretty hard to stick under 400 characters. The nice thing about that is you can elaborate a little bit further on the essay part because they give you like 4,000 characters. So I really recommend taking a stab at it. Throw it into Word. It won't be intimidating. You'll be able to knock it out with no problem.

Yeah, and I think that would be hard for me, right? It's like, I'll just start typing away, like typing like I talk, right? And then, okay, now I need to cut this back. What do I need to cut, right? And so I almost take it and say— and I think you could probably do this with ChatGPT too— but take that and say, okay, now turn this into like bullet points, 400 characters or less, and it should translate it for you, you know, come up with the high points.

So everything you just said about a bullet point, I did that 2 years ago for the purpose of kind of ironing out, at least putting a mapping process out for the application. I just went through and just sat down and before long I had a page and a half, almost 2 pages worth of bullet points of how, you know, what we have done as a team and how we've accomplished that and the data behind that, just to give bullet points that help build that output piece.

Yeah. And if you're listening, you can hear it already, right? Every time that Dan talks about this, he's talking about his team, which I think is— it's a testament to you as a servant leader and just as an amazing leader for your team, as it does take the team to kind of help buy in, right? You as a leader can kind of start it and set the tone, but I love that you've involved them in this.

You don't have to run it yourself. I mean, your team is not only your— my management team, but my technicians, then it's like fleet analysts or, you know, probably the budget staff, the procurement downtown. You've got a huge array of team members that make up the fleet success.

Do you help them, like, do they help you with actually filling out the paperwork or, you know, do you ping them for answers and what do you guys think on this? And they kind of contribute to the answer.

Yeah, exactly. In fact, I was just talking to to, uh, Jake, who's on the other side of my wall. He's my fleet analyst, uh, fleet acquisition analyst. And we were talking about very same— different topic, but very close to this, where, hey, reach out to the public works, uh, finance analyst, put her eyes on it. So yes, as I've gone through and put my application together in draft form, that's the other reason why I recommend pulling this off in Word. Because then you've got draft forms, you can pitch it around. And yes, I will pitch it to other team members we talked about, because especially if I'm trying to put, uh, some analysis together with some data, I would like to have the person I work with— so Jake and I and Amanda, for example— we get our eyes on, get, get others involved, um, with that so that when you are recognized, it's not me as a fleet manager being recognized, it is a team recognition. It's a true team recognition.

Yeah. When— so I think you kind of mentioned this, but how many times have you applied over the years? It sounds like you've applied 4 times over at Vancouver, 5 times, right?

I, I, I've applied 6 times. One of those was for the Green Garage. Okay. So we recognized in Green Garage. The other one was for 100 Best Tweets. And there's a few years that I chose not to apply because I just feel like I was ready. I had other things on my platter because it is a little time-consuming. You know, take the time to set aside and, you know, fill out 12 criteria, which is why it's really important that as you go through the year and keep a pulse on this, put some KPIs together. Put some data together so that you've got, you know, at least a good plan of attack on these 12 criteria. You can quickly come back and easily come back, reference them, and put those down on your application.

Yeah. So it sounds like starting early is definitely a big help. And if, you know, if anybody is kind of on the fence right now, if you're— this is your first time doing it, obviously the application's open now. It's due by January 26th. It might be a little bit of a crunch, you know, but if you can carve out— how long do you think it takes you, like, if you were to sit down and just hammer out an application? Like a full day?

Oh yeah, to me, I want to ponder a lot more, so it takes me a couple, maybe a week if you sit down sometimes. But some people can just quickly just type it out and be pretty good, you know, in a day. It doesn't take that long. It shouldn't take that long.

It just, if it takes you longer than that, you're probably, you're probably thinking about it too.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, I, I'll go home and think about it or I'll send it to, you know, take it, even take one home and have my wife put her eyes on it just because, yeah, she's that kind of a person in what she does with her work. She does a lot of policy creating.

So, uh, oh, that's interesting.

That's pretty fun.

Well, and that might be interesting too, like if you're a first timer and you've never done it before, uh, just to get over the hurdle of like what actually goes into it, I would almost say just apply, just type what you can, you know, spend, if you can just carve out 2, 3 hours, type what comes to your mind. And no, maybe you won't place this year, right? You know, you might get an honorable mention, uh, but you'll get the, like, you'll get that muscle working of going through the process and just feeling what that's like.

It does. That, that's correct, Josh. It just gets the juices flowing. There's a— there's a— again, the reason— there's several reasons that we probably don't have time to talk about, you know, full in-depth, right? But quick overview, it's really a way to get a fence around your fleet operations and be able to showcase what you're doing, what you do, what's accomplished as a team and fleet. Okay. But also, for example, if I could, I would like to kind of talk about Real quickly here, staff development is one criteria. So as a new fleet manager back in my Walla Walla days, and I was even a crew chief with the City of Westland for 5 and a half years, but even at that point my mind started thinking, how do I become this leader? Who do I network with? Well, get involved with your local fleet organizations like your NAFA organizations, your Fleet Seating organizations. You have a public fleet managers association of some kind. APWA has got fleet. Get acquainted with those and get involved with those meetings because then you start learning more about fleets and why this is done, why that's done. And to— that's how I— that's what I use as a resource to help me get where my knowledge base is. And then your fleet management system, the techs, staff there are very helpful too, you know, making this a call.

Yeah. So I know, obviously, I don't know how long they've been doing 100 Best, but it's been a long time. Um, and you've applied, you know, over several different stops that you've had. Have you noticed a big shift since, you know, like between Tom Johnson and now that NAFA is kind of running it? What changes have you seen?

So, so that's, that's interesting you brought that up because I, I will call myself, and I'm not afraid of it, I'm old school, right? So I've been involved with Tom Johnson and this whole 100 Best Fleets for a lot of them. I know Tom, I knew Tom, I respect him. You know, sad that he, he departed, but he's got a great legacy in this program. I, I think what, what was, uh, you know, kind of understood is you fill this out and then you were, you, you did your best. Um, but it seemed like there's a change here where if we needed supporting documents, the judges would ask for it. Whereas now, I think with NATHA over it, it seems like you're able to attach those with your application. And that's something that I just haven't done that maybe should have, where I could hand that because they can see it. I mean, that's the nice thing about the whole program is behind the scenes judges are fleet people. They recognize when they read me, right? They know me a little bit. They know my operations, but they can read between the lines too of those missing items. Some are better at the writings than others and probably put more information in. But I think that's the difference that I see is you're able now to kind of attach your analysis, your reports, or whatever you want to add to that. Well, I've got 12 or so that I do on a monthly basis. And I just never thought to attach those as I'm talking about a specific— read my essay, right?

Yeah.

I just don't think about it.

Like little essay enhancers, you know, they, they just help you tell your story a little better too. Uh, well, and I know, so this year the judges, we've got, you know, Steve Salzgeber and Scott Rood. They've been judging for, you know, some time and they are, um, they're gonna be back this year. And then new this year, Mike Brenner is kind of stepping into more of an oversight role. For NAFA over the program, and Danny Brashear, who, you know, all 3 of these guys are former Mercury consultants. They've been former fleet managers, like they know their stuff. Um, there's gonna be the 3 judges this year. So, uh, it's, it's a good panel. And I know one of the things too, if you are curious about it, like you can ask questions and you can, you know, after you get your application in and they do the scoring, you can reach out to 'em and say, hey, why did I score this way? Or how did I score? You know? Like, where did you make this decision, right? And get data around that.

So that's something else that's shifted. Not that it couldn't have been done in years past, but it seems like now that we're open to, hey, that NASA or the judges are willing to help give some good feedback back on the application. How can you advance? So I think the other part is the mindset. If you're competitive, um, nature— I'm not as competitive, so it's not necessarily my goal to be number one. My goal is to be recognized and recognize the team in that recognition. So I don't necessarily care where I'm staggered, but it's nice to be recognized for your efforts and work with the team.

So when you talk about that recognition, you know, because one of the things I'm always asking is what's, why would anybody want to do this? Right? Why would, why would somebody want to go through that process and how does that help them? What are some of the benefits that you've seen? Having applied and having gotten the recognition on, on that list?

It, it, I believe for how I worked at it, it actually brings the dialogue to the table for my, my team meeting. Yeah. It actually unites the team. It gives team boost morale. Um, and, and that, uh, hey, we, we are recognized. We know we're good at what we do. We recognize our faults too, and we're gonna work on those. And if I could turn the camera and look at my whiteboard here, it has all kinds of goals on that that we work at throughout the year. So this program helps establish those goals too that we want to individually select and work on. So for example, from this is, you know, our revenues were down here a few years ago, and that was because, you know, we talked about that. Why is that? Well, I finally realized that Listening to them and looking at them, that we were not closing our work orders or lines quick enough to generate that revenue back because our work orders are— that's our revenue source, is what we bill out, parts, and we bill out our labor. Well, we were, you know, probably started looking at the KPI for open work orders. We were 40+ days before we closed work orders down. So I said, hey guys, let's take a look at this. And so we worked on that. Now, when I run the closed workload report each month over the last couple of years, now we're down in that 30 or less day range. And by doing that, we've increased over $900,000 in our business. So that in itself, because of this program and one of those criteria's thoughts about that, um, it is how we've been able to bring up some revenue and now we're really good. We're not sitting on the block. That's what happened.

Well, I love that it shows, you know, you took a very intentional approach, right? One of the things I'm always trying to teach people is be intentional, right? Is, you know, be proactive and not reactive and thinking about like, okay, well, we got this problem and let's just try to work this number and be really focused on a specific KPI or specific metric. And that's our goal. That's our initiative. And we're going to do, okay, what can we do next? What's the, what are the tasks that we can do? And we're just always watching that number. I love that the intentionality behind that is we set a goal and we set a number and we watched it and did what we could to fix it.

So the other one I want to add to, um, I believe one of the criteria is, uh, price, uh, competitive or competitive pricing. Okay. Yeah. That's something I've really focused on and grabbed early on in my career is is what we establish, or the city or agency, or you as a fleet manager establish that shop rates and the rates, you know, through this methodology that works for your organization. Everybody wants to say, well, hey, I can go out there and get oil change cheap by going to Jiffy Lube. Well, that's a true statement, but let's take a look at what a PM is in the shop, and it's a checklist, the bullet point, and you're just not gonna get your oil changed and out the door. But, but what I'm getting at here is competitive pricing, which means every budget cycle, every 2 years, I will go out and do a shop survey of my local vendors. Peterbilt, Freightliner, Ford, Chevy, John Doe, whatever vendor that we use a lot of in the shop. And I'll, I'll do a comparison. And when we've done that, it shows that our pricing has been like, you know, we were 12% lower than the other outfits in the, you know, locally. So we were able to show that, hey, we are doing our part. We are doing, are being good stewards of taxpayer dollars because we're keeping our rates in check and a little bit low. A local market.

Yeah. Do, uh, does the city do anything or celebrate anything for, you know, like, is the Fleet Management Agency that you guys rank, um, you know, is there any kind of other benefit from a recognition? I'm not going to say notoriety, but, uh, that you guys have seen from other departments or from the city itself?

We— what we do is we get our recognized in our internal newsletter. So if we get recognized, we'll send a little, whatever we get from NAFSA or, uh, Tom Johnson, hey, this is great. You know, they, they usually, and I'll send that to the city hall. Hey, we got recognized. Um, that then gets about to internal. I've even been recognized in front of council once.

Oh, that's way awesome.

You know, one of the, one of the judges at the time happened to be close by here and first time that we were recognized in that Fleet Food Game that we presented in front of council and got a recognition out. I took the free half a pizza before that too. So we do recognize that just like we do birthdays and weddings and, and newborns and all of that here internally. But it is good to have that pat on the back from others out there that we, we serve.

Well, and what does that do for like team morale?

You know, you guys get that award and it boosts it up because one of the things we want to do is obviously we're aging. That's going to be, you know, we've got new turnovers and that's retirements come along. So the question really is, you know, from my team is, would you recommend this place for employment? And yes, they want to. In fact, we partner with the community colleges here in Clark Community College in Vancouver, as well as Portland Community College. Over the river in Oregon, and we also have a Cascadia Learning Tech, and we partner with them to bring in interns. I just yesterday had 4 interns that want to come and spend time with my 2 shops, fire shop and here, a couple hours, you know, for their program enhancement, just to shadow with my full-time techs. That brings that awareness that, hey, we can't put Municipality? Like, what's that? You know, what do they work on? It's always dealerships, you know, or this or that, without realizing counties and states and, and, uh, municipalities have a fleet, and it consists of a wide variety of stuff— law enforcement, fire, ambulance, you know, sanitation, recycle, grounds, all this variety of fleet. Cool.

Well, Dan, as we wrap up, kind of a closing, uh, closing argument. Any listener who might be on the fence, or maybe this is their first time going into it, any parting advice or words of wisdom for them?

Don't be afraid. Jump out and, and, and pull this out, put it in Word, feed on it, ponder on it, and you will find the direction. I guarantee you.

You'll get that inspiration, right? Just, you know, you'll find where you need to go and the direction that you're kind of, especially if you're a new fleet manager and this might be your first foray into the, into the job and maybe nobody's been along to mentor you, right? Like this can help with that. Right. And if you're watching the video, you can tell Dan gets a little choked up here because it is, it's, it makes a difference in the lives of your team, makes a difference in the lives of your people. And it gives you that focus and. And really inspiration, right? To how you can be a better leader. Uh, you know, cause as we say here all the time, right? Like leading fleets, they're built by fleet leaders. Right. And you've got to build yourself up in order to do that.

So this, this has helped build my confidence, I believe. Yeah. Tremendously with this advancement and even what I wanted to be.

Well, Dan, thank you very much for sharing some time with us. I can't tell you how much I appreciate this and, uh, and obviously respect you and your career. and, and what it's meant for our friendship over the years. Uh, look forward to seeing you again next year and, and hopefully with before that we'll, uh, we'll run into you while we're out on the circuit. Yeah. Uh, but you know, again, thank you on behalf of our listeners and, uh, for sharing some of your time with us today.

So thank you all.