Episode 160: Past, Present, and Future of Fleet | 2024 Recap & 2025 Predictions

This is the Fleet Success Show dedicated to helping you and your fleet succeed using the experience of fleet professionals and Hall of Fame fleet legends. The show that explores how the pillars of stakeholder satisfaction, intentional culture, resource efficiency, and risk management all combine to lead your fleet to success. We're glad you're here. Now let's get into the show. Hey, welcome back for another episode of the Fleet Success Show with your hosts, Josh Turley, Mark Kenton.

How you doing, Josh?

Good. Welcome. Glad to have you back in the studio.

Me too.

It's been a little while since you and I have gotten to sit down and powwow together.

Yes, I miss this.

I gotta tell you, these are my favorite sessions, just sitting here spitting fleet. Little background on Mark and I, I'm CEO over here at RTA Fleet, been here 20 years serving fleet managers all over the world, specifically public fleet managers. Governments definitely are sweet spots.

Can you believe it's 20 years, Josh?

No, no, it's gone by in a jiffy. And honestly, I don't feel like it's been 20 years until I get up in the morning. I wake up in the morning, I'm like, okay, no, I'm getting old. I'm starting to feel my age here. I'm not even 40 yet, right? Like, this is not right. These other guys are like, you wimp.

Oh man, it keeps getting worse. Yeah.

But Mark, you've been obviously in fleet for a long time.

Mm-hmm.

Done a lot of analysis on a bunch of different fleets as well as ran your own fleet for a little while at Fordham.

Right.

So definitely been around the block. And 2024 has been one for the record books, I feel like.

What a year.

I feel like we say that every year. Yeah, for sure. Every year we say that. To say that, you know. And I'm sure if we talked to somebody that, you know, in the 1980s, that have been the man, you wouldn't believe what happened this year, you know.

Right.

Yeah. But yeah, this year has just been— it seems like it's been just crazy.

Certainly interesting.

So we wanted to kind of go through 2024. You know, it's the end of the year, we're turning over the calendar. 2025 is upon us. And, uh, you know, we're looking ahead already, uh, what's coming down the pipe, what are we excited about. But you know, as we celebrate the new year, kind of wanted to talk through as a fleet manager, maybe just, you know, somebody that lives in this country, obviously just a crazy year for change. Yeah. So we were thinking about all the things and all the shows that we've been to this year. You know, I know you and I, like, we've gone to NTEA, NAFSA, GFX, FleetCon, APWA, AEMP. Like, we've got, we have people everywhere.

I mean, yeah, we hit a lot of shows.

Yeah.

I think we're planning on hitting more. In 2025?

Yeah, it's like 35 or something like that. It's nuts.

Yeah.

But I know we've been speaking a lot on the speaking circuit.

Right.

And which is obviously something we're very passionate about. We love, you know, sharing and speaking, which anybody who listens to the podcast knows we have the gift of gab. We talk a lot. But it's been interesting to see, obviously there's been a lot of trends I've seen in the topics that we're speaking about, but also in general. Just in conversations we're having on the floors, going out and visiting with clients, there's been a lot of changes that have happened this year.

Yep.

You know, from obviously EVs still on everybody's mind. We've done a lot of episodes on this talking about how the data is coming home to roost a little bit. Yeah. Which we're gonna do another episode on from a show you just went to where that was really apparent, clear and present.

Yep.

You know, but I do think we're starting to see that We were starting to see this last year, the year before.

Yeah.

It's just getting worse, is the EV burnout.

There's some EV burnout. You know, it's like still a hot topic. It's at every show.

Yep.

And yet, like you can hear the murmur, like people are a little bit done to, oh, it's another show and it's all EVs, right?

Can we stop talking about EVs? Can we get back to the nuts and bolts of technician retention? You know, I miss when technician shortage was the big issue, right? Because it's still a big issue.

It's still a big issue, yeah.

Not as many people are talking about it as they're talking about EVs. We've obviously said for many years that This is the time to shine, right?

It is.

The spotlight's never been brighter on fleet.

Yes.

Because of you.

Use this.

Use it to your advantage.

Yes, definitely.

But, you know, and I think part of the reason that it's driving still too is that CARB is still moving forward with their mandate.

Right.

We still have other states that are following along. As goes California, so goes at least 15 other states in the country.

That's correct, right.

And then 15 other states go the opposite direction.

So, yep.

It's nuts.

And then depending who's in power, the federal government goes along or not.

And so like, a little skip forward preview, 2025 is gonna be very interesting on that front.

Yes.

What else are we seeing? What are some of the other topics that we're hearing on the trade show floor or just in general from fleet managers?

Yeah, well, real quick on the EV thing too, I will point out like that conversation is progressing. So there is some burnout, but there's clearly like the sophistication, like the best way I could say it is table stakes knowledge is much higher.

Yeah.

And the conversation is much, much more around, you know, infrastructure and how do I deal with this and how do I account for, charge loss, you know, the charger says I charge this much, but the battery only— we have like advanced the level here, at least in the trade show world, as far as the sophistication of what we did. Those things weren't even thoughts on people's mind.

Right.

And now they're beginning to try to solve that problem. You know, how do I get that data integrated with my Wexfuel car? So they're definitely diving deeper. And that might be part of the fatigue. I don't know your thought on that because it's starting to get hard.

Yeah.

You know, to keep it all up there.

The first 80% was easy. Yes. It's this last 20 that we're just really having a hard time with. Yeah. It's the change management piece. We talk about change management all the time. But yeah, that last 20%, you know, that last mile delivery we talk about. How do we measure that? How do we make sure, oh yeah, we're saving so much money, but it's gotta come from somewhere. The budget's coming from somewhere. Yeah, it's not your budget, now it's facilities. How do you plan for that? How do you account for it? We've talked about, I remember sitting through the Davids presentation and talking about the, challenges with at-home charging now.

Yes.

And, you know, the liability that comes with that from a home insurance standpoint, from a company insurance standpoint. And no, EVs are not catching on fire every other minute.

No.

Let's like be really clear here. That's totally overblown. However, they still do catch on fire while charging, just like a million other things catch on fire while charging. It's not an EV problem, it's a battery problem.

Yes.

Let's get over that.

Yes.

But you still have to kind of account for that. And it's a new world, right? So there's all these little challenges that we're coming up with. We're finding solutions. Other things, it's like, yeah, we don't have that one solved yet. Charge time still has not been solved.

Not really.

And they're gonna have to keep coming out with, you know, it's faster chargers, better battery management. And that's really the only way you're gonna solve that problem.

Yeah, and you're seeing creative solutions around that that are going to help specific fleets, right? Like, you know, Bradley Northrop out in Carlsbad is building a fast charge lane by getting, by using Level 3s on even light-duty vehicles, right? So you can get them in and out in a few minutes, not literally, but almost literally.

Well, that's as long as the vehicle supports it.

As long as the vehicle supports it.

Because that's another issue.

Yeah, right, exactly.

Like the F-150 Lightning has a different charging rate than the Chevy Silverado, which is better and actually far superior in that regard. I think it's inferior in a lot of others, but charging rate and range, Silverado takes the cake on that one.

Absolutely. And you're seeing things like en route charging for transit systems and That actually looks really cool.

That's expensive, but way cool.

Yeah, exactly. You know, so—

I saw a thing the other day where, you know, just like we use for like streetcars, you know, the overhead cables.

Yeah, yeah.

Talk about using that on semi trucks.

Bring it back, right? Yeah. Yeah. And it makes sense. You know, in-road charging I've seen.

Yeah, magnetic induction.

Yeah. And again, those work fine in certain use cases for certain fleets.

Fixed routes, you know where you're going, and— assuming you have the infrastructure cost. Correct.

Correct.

Because you've got to be able to pay for that.

Yes.

And that's not a like local, I'm not going to do this for myself. That's a federal government or state government type investment.

Right.

So good luck getting those guys to pay for anything.

Yeah.

Yeah, they do offer. I shouldn't give them a totally bad rep because there's grant money, there's things like that. But true. Yeah, it's— you got to jump through some hoops and you got to cut through, like prepare to bring some scissors because of all the red tape you got to cut through. Yeah. So just be ready for that. What else are we seeing?

Yeah, I mean, a bunch of things. One thing that I think you would agree is kind of exciting. I would say it's not enough, but at least it's there.

It's a step in the right direction.

Yeah, right. And that's— we're starting to see like leadership being talked about in a true way. You know, again, some of those talks were good that we attended. Some of them frankly weren't.

They hurt me.

They weren't very good.

Some of them hurt me. Some of them were amazing. It was like, oh yeah, that's a super awesome— like, I love that you talk about this. I learned that from Patrick Lencioni or Jim Collins. Some of it you could tell is a rehash. Everything I do is a rehash, so I can't knock them too bad for that. Yeah, I would just like to see a little more attribution.

Yeah, attributed and apply it to fleet too, right?

Connect the dots.

Connect the dots.

Something that you and I, like, when we speak, we attribute and we connect the dots. So like, hey, there's no original ideas here, but we are making original applications, which is how you as fleet managers know how to do this, right? Because we did. We heard some good speakers. But we didn't hear a lot of good speakers that connected the dots.

Bingo.

But that was better than the bad speakers. Yeah, but at least they were still talking about leadership.

Well, that's my point.

Like, I'll take that.

That's a positive. That, that at least says to me, right, that not only is the industry interested in hearing about it, but the folks running these shows are starting to hear that message that, hey, this is something that we need to up the game. And again, I've beaten this dead horse, but, you know, we know that there's a problem in our industry with regards to resources sent towards our people.

Yep.

Right. What do you do? You become a master tech and then what, right? And it's— don't get me wrong, and I think NAFSA is doing the world a wonderful service by giving us the CAFM, but what do you do between being a master tech and getting your CAFM, your shop super? Nothing. There's just nothing. So that is encouraging to me, and hopefully— and you know, and you hear more and more talk about it, more and more effort and attention in general. Just so we haven't really moved the needle, but the fact that it's getting talked about makes me optimistic.

You know, my favorite sessions at NAFSA— or no, it was GFX. It was GFX. Um, so Kelly Reagan gave the keynote there. Yep. But my favorite session wasn't that session from him. It was actually one of the other sessions he ran. I want to say it was just a Q&A panel, um, where he was up there talking about probably technician retention, recruiting, um, and really talked about how a lot of shops will blame the unions.

Yes.

For my problems start because I can't discipline anybody, can't hold anybody accountable. Right. And here's Kelly Reagan gets up and he is like, "I have 3 unions in my shop and we don't have these problems." So like, I should have triple the problems you guys have and yet I have zero. So I really, really enjoyed that message. 'Cause it was like a big loud, you know, clarion call of, "Hey, stop blaming the unions, work with them." And the unions have a vested interest in making this happen too. So I really enjoyed that session. I would've loved to hear that in the keynote session or, you know, from the general stage, but.

Agreed.

I still— that was, when I look back at one of the favorite things I listened to, that was definitely at the tops of my list, was hearing him talk about that.

Yep. Yeah, I think that's a really good point.

Yeah, otherwise, I mean, there was several other people that talked about leadership and, you know, becoming a great leader, how to lead people correctly and in a way that's full of integrity and things like that. So I enjoyed that.

I mean, it certainly wasn't like flooding or dominating the circuit the way EVs do, but But it was, I wanna say at every show except one, it was at least a single session on it, right? So, you know, movement in the right direction.

Yeah. Whereas, you know, a few years back you weren't seeing anything.

Nothing.

It was all about, you know, technician retention, but we're not gonna talk about what the actual issue is, which is management. It was about recruitment and what are the tactics of going and finding these techs and tricking 'em into coming to work for you.

Right.

Lure.

Tricking.

Yeah, yeah, right.

That's what it is.

I gotta lure these people in, I gotta incentivize 'em and, you know, throw all these crazy benefits at 'em. It's like, hey, don't, We just got to lead them like people, whatever.

Yeah. And to your point about, you know, the message here, like, it was all about— it was just a big wine fest, throwing your hands up, you know. Uh, well, there's nothing I can do, and I need more millennials.

All they want is money. Money and titles.

Yeah, right. And if it's not the millennials, and the OEMs pay too much, and it's just like, you know, can't keep up with the dealers, right?

It's an arms race, and I have no money.

And right, hopefully at this point folks are hearing the message: stop making excuses. You know, is it hard? Yes, it's hard.

—our solutions, though. Yes. And I will tell you, like, I'm making a concerted effort. I would really love to get in front of government HR managers in California. I have heard loud and clear from all of you in California about how tough and difficult it is to get HR to approve and make some of the changes that we know they need to make. I would love to get in front of their conference. If you know what conference they're going to, send it to me, podcast@rtafleet.com. I am ready and waiting. And I'm going to be looking on my own, too, because I would love to get in front of them. And help them truly understand the impact of culture on government fleets. That's a little on government fleets, but shoot, man, government accounting, you know, your Department of Health and Human Services, everywhere. This is a global lesson. But I heard from 2 or 3 fleet managers that, you know, I try to do this, but HR is basically, they cut me out of the hiring process. And so I can't do anything about it. That's on my list for 2025 is I would really love to see public fleet HRs take the next step. Corporate, I think, is much farther ahead. Yes. Than the public side. Yes. But that's typical from an organizational standpoint. But I know I would love to get out there and advocate on your behalf as public fleet managers with the HR people. Yeah. They really do need to hear this message. They do. So they do.

Yeah. There's a few. I mean, obviously folks are still struggling with data. They're still struggling with information overload. With technology in general. You know, I think there's still— I would argue that the industry still doesn't recognize sort of a core thing that we talk about here, which is, you know, this new technology. I'll pick telematics. It's great. It's wonderful. Can do all these things for you. But if you still can't calculate what your technician productivity is in your FMIS, you're not going to do anything with that telematics, at least not on the fleet side. Your operations folks may have a need for it. That's fine. But, you know, this expectation that technology is the cure-all without the plan. And you're starting to see that message more. Obviously we give it, but—

We just spoke about it a few weeks ago on our Data Overload podcast. Yeah, yeah, right. So if you want to learn more about that one, go there. Yeah, please go there.

But on the circuit, it's still more about look at all the wonderful things technology can do for you. And now what? Right? Like the fleet management world are not IT professionals. They're dependent on IT professionals who are not at that conference. So there's, there's a dot that I think the industry still needs some connecting with. Another one that jumps— I guess I jumped over to what's not being spoken about. So forgive me. We can maybe we can bounce back and forth. But the one that's not being spoken about that we speak about, I'm sure, you know, we have— we talked about this before, we have our feet in two industries, right? We're a software provider. And we're in the fleet world for sure. And if you Look at our roster. We're filled with fleet professionals. On the software side of our life, though, AI has been a conversation for years now, right? It's coming. It's coming.

Work on it. It really took a leap with ChatGPT launched in— what was that, 2022, 2023? Yes. I feel like it's dog years, man.

Right. It feels like it's 100 years since then. But yes, that's exactly right. Yeah. And I think, I think that is when it was because I remember some of the employees that were around at that time and when they left kind of a thing. So yeah. And I got to tell you, I heard it other than our Connect conference where we spoke about it a couple of times. I saw one other talk about it at one other conference, and even conferences I don't go to, I read, I read, you know what the sessions are. Give credit. I'll tip the cap to Fleet Forward, Chris Brown over there, Bobbit. And they, their introductory keynote, I believe, don't hold me to this. I want to say it was from Geotab and he was talking about AI, right? And then it didn't get discussed again for the rest of the conference. And it wasn't— you know, what's nice about going to a conference, and you know this, is yes, there's what's happening in the sessions, but what's the coffee speak? What's the water cooler speak, right? What, what, what do we have in common? That's a big piece of—

it's one of my favorite things about going to trade shows. Yeah, it's like, that's just so much good information comes just from the water cooler talk. Yeah, exactly. Talk on the floor, right?

I don't think there was another— I mean, maybe, you know, there was some momentum and no more AI. And so I would argue again, this is a message we're bringing to the world, but AI, guys, it's going to— it's going to— same thing's going to happen that happened with big data. Fleet folks, listen to me, okay? The rest of the world will move forward and have it be part of their everyday life, and you're going to be years behind trying to catch up, you know, trying to integrate it into your workflow and the various things that you do.

So I have a theory about—

pause on this, please.

I have a theory about this, right? And I think a lot of the reason why, you know, from a technology standpoint, technology is its own thing. But just from a, hey, here's a new best practice. In fleet managers, we struggle with it because we are drowning in best practices, right? Interesting. We have so much to do and so many things to do, and we're barely surviving as it is. And here we're going to throw in another thing for you. Now, mind you, this thing could be super helpful and could alleviate a lot of the time demands that you have. But it takes time to learn that and we struggle with investing the time in ourselves to learn the new best practice and implement a new best practice. It's definitely true. It's half the reason why, you know, I just posted about this was when FMIS implementations fail is because we couldn't give it the time it needed to make it good. To do the things, fix the process, fix the culture, fix something, right? 'Cause it's not the technology that's usually a problem, it's a people problem. One of my favorite sayings is all problems are leadership problems. We couldn't lead people to the change we needed. And I think part of the reason why we struggle with new technology like AI and we struggle with adopting even just basic technology like an FMIS, we struggle with new best practices or new metrics, big data, telematics, whatever, is because we feel like we're drowning and it's hard for us to prioritize our time. Yeah, it's a good point, you know. And so I think the same thing will happen. Mark is absolutely right. We will get left behind as an industry if we're not staying up to date with this stuff. That's why we as a company, we're constantly looking at all this stuff. Predictive maintenance, AI, what's the use of AI in a fleet world? Because half the time, you know, we get this new technology and it's like, yeah, that's cute. That won't ever work in a shop. Right. You know, one day we might get to the point where voice commands work. But I remember we had somebody in-house probably 5 years ago when Amazon Alexa was all the rage. You remember that came out and people were losing their minds. He was convinced that Alexa was the future of shop management, right? And while I don't fault him for being passionate about the technology and loving it, because it really was cool— yeah, no hands, hands-free shop, yeah, for sure, amazing— but now try doing that in a shop where you've got impact wrenches going and just loud noises and there's engines going and it's fans everywhere. Yep, Alexa can't hear you no more, right? Right. And so the practicality of it, it comes up to us to figure out Is this a practical technology solution? How do we connect the dots between technology and use? How do we make it seamless in the application so you don't even know that you're dealing with it? And so, you know, as industry providers, those are the things we look at. But it's still difficult for people, just the basics. We talk about ChatGPT all the time. Everybody should be using ChatGPT in their job. Everybody, pay the $20 a month. Pay another $20 a month and go get Claude. And if you've not heard of Claude, That's half the problem.

That's where I'm going.

You know, there are so many AI tools out here that will help you and you don't even know the half of them because they're changing so fast. Yeah. Oh man, we've totally segued here.

One of my favorite quotes I learned—

Sorry, that's important, so let's do it. But one of my favorite quotes that I learned this year was talking about how the world, you know, the people who go through and they get educated, they have learned how to run and manage a world that's gonna leave them behind, right? Only the learners will survive. And so you have to constantly be learning.

That's fascinating. And growing, true, right?

But if you only learn one thing and then you stop, you're going to be, you know, like, you will have perfectly learned the world that you're not going to inherit, right? You know, so you have to be constantly learning and growing. And that adaptability is our survival, right? Like, that's what's going to allow us to continue as fleet managers into the 21st and 22nd centuries, right? Um, but we have to be willing to grow and learn and change. And I tell you, this industry struggles with change.

We struggle with change. I mean, all industries do, but we really seem to be—

Having dealt with a lot of industries, I have like, this was one that really struggles. Healthcare is probably another one that really struggles with change.

Yes. Yeah. But that's a good point. I kind of want to re-say that in a fleet management setting in a way that maybe is ground floor for folks. But it's like one of the things you often have said is fleet managers should be working on the business, not in the business, right? And I, and I know that sounds pie in the sky, folks, but to Josh's point earlier about, well, why don't we accept this new technology or work? It's because we feel we're drowning. Um, but, but there's this, this thing, and I know I'm guilty of it too. This is not pointing fingers, but it's— we're drowning trying to get through today. But ironically, if we prioritize that other thing it would actually help us not drown so badly getting through the day. Right. And so to your point about learners, like to bring that home, this is what I would say to fleet managers, I think is your message and you correct me. Hey, your people should be executing what the best thing to be doing right now is. You should be off figuring out what is going to be the best thing to be doing tomorrow and the day after and months and years down the road. Right. That's that learning element. Right? They should be executing what's best for today. You, you need to be preparing for what's best for the future.

Somebody's got to be looking at where the ship's going, otherwise you're going to run smack into an iceberg, right? Maybe this is a beatitude, right? Is blessed are the learners, for they will inherit the earth, right?

And well, evolution has taught us one thing that's actually evolutionarily accurate.

So yeah, right, it's all about adaptability, right?

Only the strong survive.

And I would say in this day and age of information, right, is only the informed survive.

Right. Well, the strong are the informed. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So that, that's a good point.

That's, um, yeah, we didn't, we didn't plan to go there, but, and I will tell you, you know, when you talk about, hey, you're not spending enough time on the business versus in the business, on the fleet versus in the fleet, is the same thing I've said for many years, which is we all have the same amount of time. What we don't have is the right priorities, right? So we don't have a time problem, we have a priority problem, right? And if we're not making time to focus on how to improve or not taking the time to invest in ourselves, we are not spending the right— we don't have the right priorities. Our priorities are backwards. And we need to reset and do an audit, figure out where we're spending the time that we shouldn't be, and recalibrate. But you're the master of your fate. Go change. Make the change. Focus your priorities on where you want to be focused and learn and adapt for the future.

And interestingly enough, this connects all the way back to the very first point. Right, about HR and about hiring people. And don't, don't blame the union, and don't blame— oh, you— they don't let you fire people or anything of that nature. Um, you know, go make the change, right? Figure it out.

Uh, and talking about the man in the mirror. Yeah, right.

Look at yourself and make the change. But it's true, because if you put— people throw their hands up like we said, but if you went back and fixed the team, you would have less fires to put out, right? So Oh, okay. It's a circle. One thing I love about fleet is it's a network. It's a network of, of different points that interact in this beautiful way, uh, you know.

And your job as the fleet manager is just to put them all together.

Yeah, because no one goes to school for fleet management, chances are you were never formally trained on how to successfully lead a fleet. That's where the Fleet Success Playbook comes in. The Fleet Success Playbook is your guide to building a a safe, reliable, and efficient fleet that provides exceptional service. Learn all about the 4 pillars of fleet success: stakeholder satisfaction, intentional culture, resource efficiency, and risk management. Get nearly 100 years of combined advice on common challenges, practical solutions, actionable tips, and real examples from fleet industry experts who have been there and done that. Visit www.fleetsuccessplaybook.com to request your free copy today.

Let's see here. I mean, there's a bunch of different things as far as this year and talked about. And I mean, those I think are the big ones. I think from a—

definitely from a fleet-specific focus, those are definitely big ones. Yeah. So this has been a year of years. Mm-hmm. We went through like the political landscape alone. Yeah, it was nuts. Yes, I'm glad to be done with this year. Yeah. Um, yes, I mean, you know, however you feel about the outcome of this year, like, let's be honest, at least we got through. At least it's done. We're done. Here's another 4 years. 2028, it's right around the corner. Before you know it, primary season, here we go again. Um, right, like, that was super crazy and had crazy effects on the market. Maybe that was less impacting on fleets, but it definitely was having an impact on people. Yeah. Which was the stress and anxiety of the world, right? We talk about the political situation here in the States. You've got presidential candidates with assassination attempts. You've got them dropping out of races. You have last minute, like, you know, just bringing in a contender. And the maelstrom that just surrounded all of that stuff between those two candidates, it was nuts. It was absolutely crazy, right?

And people, I mean, other podcasters are out there giving advice on how to handle dealing with the person who doesn't vote the way you vote at Thanksgiving. Like, when did we—

where did we move on from that?

Just mind explode.

Like, we just be common, decent, sensible people. But that's been the world, I think, ever since 2020. Yes, that's the anxiety of the world has ratcheted up. Yep. And we have trouble dealing with setbacks and resilience and all that stuff. Yeah, no, it's true. Um, and I'm hopeful for like this generation coming up because, man, they're just gonna have gone through so much that nothing's gonna rattle them anymore. Yeah, that'd be nice. You know, that'd be cool. That'd be really cool.

I got one for you, though, that I didn't hear. Okay. And I called one of the groups. I'm— some folks know I'm, I'm pretty active with NASUF, right? Which is the National Association for State and University Fleet Managers. Yeah, fleets. Thanks. And, and I brought this up at the talk this year. You know, the one topic I didn't see anywhere was supply chain. And they go, well, well, we don't— that problem seems to be fixed, right? So why would we be— because that was all people were bitching about, right? Oh, are we allowed to say that on podcast?

Unless you're Ford. I love you, Ford.

Man, come on. So it's like, oh no, you know, and, and you heard that a little bit with the OEMs early in the year where they were like, oh no, no, everything's ready for you to order. And we're talking to fleets like, nope, we got told nope, nope, we got that order canceled. So there's definitely a disconnect somewhere. But here's the part that is troubling to me, to your point about learning. You know, the question I asked at NASIF was, what did you learn from the supply chain, you know, breakdown? Crickets, right? And I'm not picking on anyone because I don't think, you know, that they're guilty of it. But, you know, if you haven't learned anything from it, then guess what happens the next time?

Can I tell you my number one learning from it?

You're pleased?

You're going to be very proud of me, Mark. Okay. The best antidote to a supply chain crisis is a healthy replacement plan. Amen, brother. All right. You heard it here. That's my number one takeaway from all you people. If you didn't learn anything from the supply chain crisis, that's right. To stay on top of your replacement planning. Stay on top of it. Because that would have mitigated a lot of your supply chain issues. You could have stretched it a little bit. Your fleet would have been much healthier had you been on top of it ahead of time. Yep. This is that whole ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure thing. Yes. You would have been sweating a lot fewer bullets than the guy who's 10 years behind. Right. And begging like his stuff is just breaking down left and right. His M&R costs went through the roof. Well, yours just barely spiked a little bit.

Correct. So exactly. And they can't get parts and all. You're not, you're not dealing with that if you have a solid replacement program. And the reason I wanted to bring that up is I think it plays very nicely into, you know, when we think about, well, what's coming in 2025, right? And one of the things that seems to be coming is this new tariff approach. Mm. Right. And let's be honest, we don't really know exactly how that's going to disrupt the supply chain, but I— people have theories.

Yeah, people have theories. Yeah, and they're probably not wrong.

Yeah, but I'm willing to bet it will in some way, shape, or form, right? Well, are you prepared for that world? I, you know, I, I don't know. I would venture to guess most aren't, frankly. Um, but, but we shall see. You know, there's a lot coming in 2025, man.

Yeah, well, and yeah, you just— with the new administration coming in, we already kind of hinted at it, like the federal fleet is going to completely change their direction on EVs, which is not, you know, whether your whole position on EVs is irrelevant, it's going to do things to the market because of that. You know, now you've just ripped out, you know, half the demand for EVs. It's going to do things with the OEMs. They're not going to have the contracts they were hoping for. That's going to get shifted around. They're already pulling back. That's something that happened this year. We saw a massive retreat from the OEMs from this, you know, 2 years ago it was all in on EVs.

All we're going to produce is EVs.

Yeah. And now they're kind of backing on that. And they recognize the economics of the situation. With the new administration coming in, those economics are gonna get even more challenging. So just kind of expect that. I don't see California changing their direction though. [Speaker] No, no. [Speaker] And so we're gonna be in this weird dichotomy world for a little while longer, at least to 2028. Which just makes this even more interesting 'cause 2030 is the big year for, well, 2030 and 2034, you know, when we talk about carbon and enforcement dates and things like that. It's going to be very interesting. Yeah. The next decade.

I got a prediction related to this, but I'll wait for the end here when we give you— if we give any predictions. Well, I don't know if anyone has seen this new Ram truck that's coming out. We're calling it an REV. And the idea is it's like a plug-in hybrid, except the, the engine doesn't actually drive the wheels, right? It doesn't. So it counts for any existing, you know, statutes as an EV. —right?

OK.

But what the engine does is it serves as an onboard generator. I mean, this is the same thing with the Chevy—

is it the Bolt or Volt? One of those things.

Does the Volt have that too? Yeah. OK, yeah.

It's the same kind of thing. It's a specific type of drive where the engine assists like it does in a Prius, or the engine is just an onboard generator like it is in a lot of the power hybrids you see today.

Yeah. So that's what you're seeing. And I'm expecting to maybe see a little bit of a rebirth in plug-in hybrids and definitely some more of those coming out. Because what the OEMs have figured out, I think, to your point, is, hey, people aren't buying those as quickly as we thought they were. The range anxiety is real. The public infrastructure is just not there.

The standards aren't there yet. Yep, yep. And we've been saying this for years. Yes. And maybe not years, at least since last year, we've been saying it. Plug-in hybrid is the answer for right now. Yes, it is. Right? That's the perfect bridge from a traditionally fueled fleet to a BEV fleet. Right. Plug-in hybrid is going to get you until the infrastructure catches up. That's going to be the thing that gets you the buy-in. 'Cause this is something else a lot of people don't talk about is that, like in California, you can't get chargers unless you can show the demand. But you can't get the demand, like if you bought a battery electric fleet, you wouldn't be able to charge 'em because the chargers wouldn't be there on day one. So you literally buy a fleet, park it, wait for the charging infrastructure to come in, and then you could use your fleet.

[Speaker] And we've seen that, like we've seen that on the ground.

[Speaker] The way you get around that is you buy plug-in hybrids that can use gasoline until the infrastructure's there. Is the utility will look at your current demand. They don't care about what your 2025 model says, what your 2027 model says. They don't care. Right. They are only able to supply what you can ask for. And you can only ask for what you have in your fleet. And so the only way to get around that is, hey, we're going to buy plug-in hybrids. And then that's going to—

Yeah, that helps. Bridge the gap. Certainly, if you give them a plan, and there's a lot out there. And you can show them what— again, it comes back to that discipline around replacement planning. So you can show where you're going to buy EVs and what your demands are going to be and so forth and so on. But what's neat about this approach, though, is I think that those vehicles vehicles have much larger battery capacities and therefore much longer battery ranges than the PHEV technology that as it is to place. So that might be sort of the next, um, missing link, let's say, on the way towards pure BEVs, potentially.

We'll see, we'll see how it goes. Cooler, like those onboard generators if we're running renewable diesel.

Oh, that would be sweet. Biodiesel, right?

Yeah, because like you do renewable diesel, now you actually have something that's sustainable. I mean, heck, we know that diesel puts out way more torque and I don't know, like generator statistics, but I know that matter or not, right? Yeah. Diesel propane generators are absolutely a thing. But I'm curious if you get more thermal efficiency from those versus, you know, like a turbo generator versus a just a typical gasoline, you know, 4-kilowatt application or something like that.

It's a whole nother episode, so I won't get into it. But man, biodiesel doesn't— did not get enough of a look in this country, I got to tell you. But that's my opinion. We'll talk about it another time. In any event, right?

Yeah, I think that's—

I think that's a big one. That, you know, we'll, we'll see. And, you know, another piece on that supply chain is like, you know, and again, I'm not an expert on war or foreign public affairs and all that, but, you know, it doesn't seem to be an end in sight to Ukraine, to multiple issues in the Middle East.

And all of those are going to affect oil prices. And like, you know, or what are you doing right now to hedge against potential spikes? Now, Trump says he can come in and he's going to get everybody in line. I'll believe it when I see it. He's done it once before, but it lasted for a year. [Speaker:TYLER_COWEN] Exactly. [Speaker:STEVE_BROOKS] And we've had peace before and it lasted almost as long, like blink and you miss it kind of thing. We were talking about millennia of racial tension in the Middle East, right? And this is not going to be a podcast on that, but you got to assume it's just going to keep continuing and oil prices are going to continue to keep being high because of speculation. It's the one thing I don't understand. Maybe I need to get better about this, the speculative trading on consumables like oil. Obviously the Ukraine situation obviously changed a lot of things with oil supply in the world because of all the tariffs and sanctions against Russia for that, right? That could be interesting to see those two, if they do finally work something out, uh, what that does to the global supply chain for oil, right, once Russia's oil comes back online.

But right, obviously there's multiple plays. There's domestic, you know, fossil fuels, and maybe there's more of that gets released, or some of that, some of areas where they don't— they didn't want to frack, maybe get approved to frack. Who knows how any of that is potentially influenced. But, but certainly there's going to be fluctuation, that much we can promise you. And one of the things about oil prices that people often don't realize— and again, don't claim to be an expert, but I, I can read well enough to know— oil price fluctuations impact manufacturing big time and impact supply chain actually big time, more than just what does your gasoline cost, uh, at the pump.

That's the most immediate one and most one that you see right away. Exactly. But you're also going to your tire costs. You're going to see it in parts manufacturing. Uh, you're going to see it for solar cells. You're going to see it for batteries. You're going to see it across the entire gamut, right? Because everything gets more expensive when everything runs on fuel. Plane tickets, your travel budget will suddenly go up. So yeah, you have to be prepared for that in more ways than one. It's not just your fuel budget line item that's going to be impacted by that. Yeah, yeah. Can I make a radical prediction for 2025?

Yeah, let's hear it. All right, this is going to be bold here.

All right, this isn't happening, But I just want to go on record and we're going to make a breakthrough with nuclear fusion.

Oh, that would be sweet, man.

I tell you, right? But I like— I am— I feel like we are right on the cusp of that. I, you know, I'm obviously a huge fan of nuclear. Yes. I think nuclear fission would get us a long way towards a clean energy. Yep. I've been preaching that for years. Obviously, I don't live near Three Mile Island, so I don't know what the panic, you know. Right. I understand the science of it and it scares me. Yeah. When it goes wrong, it goes wrong big. Right. But I think with enough time and energy, like you can make that a lot safer, or at least mentally you could psychologically prepare people. We've made it a lot safer since then. Right. Those were old designs, 40-year-old technology. Yeah. More than that now.

Right, right. 1960, some of those are. Yeah.

And maybe there needs to be more stringent regulations around, you know, safety regulations, refurbs, refits, you know, to modernize some of the old reactors, that kind of thing. Fission was good enough. It could have done it. Right? Could have solved a lot of the power issues that we have in this country right now. However, fusion, I'm telling you, like, you're going to start seeing, you're already seeing breakthroughs right now. Right now, as of the recording of this podcast, I just read this the other day, a company has been able to maintain, these are crazy temperatures, 100 million degrees Celsius. Wow. Right? And that's because this is the temperature you have to get fusion reactors to.

Right.

And they contain it within, you know, like a plasma wall.

That's what I was going to ask. How are they containing that? It's you.

You create plasma and then the reaction happens inside the plasma. Wow. That's the only way to do it, right? These big tomacac reactors. And they have been slowly working their way up. You know, it went from like 1 second of a sustained reaction to 15 seconds of a sustained reaction. The prior record was, I think, 32 seconds. And I think just as of a week or 2 ago, they just hit 48 seconds. Wow. Now, 2 years ago, that was nothing. Yeah. Right. So we are making incremental changes on that. Pretty soon you're going to see an exponential breakthrough. Yeah. So I'm calling it like 2025, you're gonna see a massive breakthrough in the capabilities of nuclear fusion. Now it's not gonna be ready mainstream, that's years away. 'Cause then there's gonna be all the regulatory stuff. And then the nice thing about fusion reactor, this is why it's safe, is 'cause once you cut the power to the thing, the whole thing just shuts down. It just stops, right? There's no radioactivity, there's no meltdown, there's nothing, it just stops. You know, and the big fear back then was like we were gonna cause a black hole. I suppose that's possible, but then it doesn't matter anymore, does it? You won't be around. And you won't even notice. It'll just be gone.

Yeah, the nuclear thing is just fascinating in general because it just seems like we have the solution on our fingertips for so many of these energy issues we talk about. And for some reason, we're choosing to turn a blind eye to a technology that's proven essentially right now.

Fusion's not proven. And a lot of people will tell you— a lot of the critics will tell you like this has been a pipe dream and it's, you know, been something we've been chasing for decades. Fission has been around, has been proven. I mean, it runs the nuclear submarines and all the— all the aircraft carriers and everything. You haven't had an accident there, right?

That's a great, that's a great point. Let's, let's just pause on that for just a second, okay? These submarines, I mean, who knows exactly? I mean, the US has hundreds of them, right? Um, with— when you think of the world, there's probably 1,000 of them, I'm guessing, whatever the number is. And when you look at it, we saw a talk, uh, at a leadership conference this year, and I think— what was the average age? 19 and a half or something like that?

Yeah.

And it was like 300 and change people. The average age of the crew was 19 and a half.

On an aircraft carrier. On an aircraft carrier.

Oh, that's what it was. And 16— what was it? Every 18 months.

Every 18 months the entire crew turns over, right? So I mean, they're not turning over the entire crew at once, but every 18 months it's a whole new crew. Yeah. So over the space of 18 months, every crew member will be rotated off that ship.

If they can do it, it's doable, man.

Now mind you, it's the Navy. It is. So it's a little more strict, right? You're talking about, you power companies.

And yeah, and the average age is at 19 and a half.

No, and they don't have to turn over every 18 months. Sorry, I know that's a tangent, but yeah, the fission thing is definitely like, we could do that now. Yes, but I will tell you, the fusion thing excites me just because it is 100% clean, right? Very, very safe. But it is still a ways off. Yeah, it's probably 10 years, maybe even 20 years out before it really becomes the de facto source of power for anybody. Yeah. But who knows? I could be surprised. I'd be happy to be surprised on that one if it comes faster. Yeah. So I could also be totally disappointed. It could never come, which has been, you know, for a lot of people that's been true. But fission has been around since the '50s. It's proven, you know, it's now 70-some-odd-year-old technology. Right. Well, actually, it's been around since 1945. That was the first fission bomb, right?

Exactly.

And they turned it very quickly into a reactor to generate that.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say, I believe the first reactor either went up or started going up in the early '60s, right? So yeah, yeah, it's, it's a shame that we haven't given that more blood flow, to steal a phrase from you, uh, because I do think it could solve the world. But again, you know, whatever your politics— it's interesting though, it's an American thing.

Yeah, because Europe does not have the same stigma against nuclear.

Yeah, that's interesting, isn't it?

You know, uh, it's definitely an American thing. And I think because obviously the media plays up over here— yes, it does—

very differently, you know, right?

You're gonna have three eyes and everybody's ready for a Three Mile Island. And then Chernobyl goes and that was terrible. It was also the Soviets, so it was very different. You had Fukushima. And so you think about it, there's been 3, maybe 4 nuclear disasters from a power plant standpoint. And yet economically, climate change-wise, whatever, way cleaner, way better than anything we've had from it. That's actually my favorite argument to make with climate change advocates. Is, hey, if you are— you already know the impact of pollution and how bad that is for things like asthma, respiratory disease, cancer, whatever you want to name and attribute to climate change and to pollution. Far and away, much bigger of an impact than any radioactive accident, right? It's just that radioactive, you can't see it, and so people are scared by it. They're scared of that.

Yes. So that's a big piece, I think.

But you overcome that and You know, who knows? 2025 could be the resurgence of nuclear energy, especially if Trump really wants to get energy independent. Yeah, so you could definitely see a massive way to do that. So, yeah, and cheaper, more reliable, um, maybe cleaner. I don't know if it's cleaner than solar and wind. It's definitely cleaner than wind from a, like, from a building manufacturing standpoint.

Yeah, because to build, you know, those, it takes years. And I haven't read it in a while, so I don't want to throw a number and then it sticks and then I'm wrong and everyone's beating me up in the comments. But well, this isn't the last episode of Landman, right?

He's very, he harps on that stuff all the time, the amount of oil that goes into wind generators.

Yes, yes, exactly. But it's quite a long return on investment, let's say, from an emissions perspective.

And nuclear reactors, I know the same thing. It's a huge return on it. Like you've gotta wait years for that to pay off, which is why they don't like making changes to it to fix stuff. And so that's another reason why it gets a bad rap. But next year you're gonna see a massive, and like it's gonna become real for people next year, I hope. That's my big, like, optimistic looking forward to 2025. Right. Because that would solve— if you could get that working, that would solve a huge burden to the electrification issue. Yeah. You know, it would solve a lot of the grid problems that keep EVs from really becoming more prevalent. Yeah. So, yeah.

And I think there's a big piece there too, which is— and I don't know the answer for this and I don't have a prediction about it, but Wex had a great presentation as well recently at one of the shows and they talked about how only something like 75%, I want to say the number was mid-70s, of public chargers are actually available for you to use. They're broken, they're behind the gate when, when the map doesn't tell you they were behind the gate. You know, you have to pay to get into a, um, you know, to get into like a garage, but it's, it's noted as a public charger, but you actually have to pay for that, right? So essentially, the public infrastructure is not nearly as public or as large as what it seems to be. Oh, interesting. When you look at any of these charger maps and so forth, because you can't actually access it. Between is broken, and then that only accounts for broken or behind a paygate or, or an employee only. Then they point out how, you know, there's compatibility issues with the various charger heads. And then last but not least, of course, you have, uh, well, how fast does it charge?

Well, does it match up to my charging application, right? Because unless unless they're perfectly in line, you know, yeah, you might have a 150, but this thing's rated at 200. Your common denominator is 80, right? It'll drop to 80. Yes. You know, and that's the—

it's fascinating. I remember once being on a public charger for 2 hours and I got 2.5%, and it was like, thanks, now I can make it halfway home.

Yeah. And you were thinking like, this thing said it was rated—

it was a fast charger, correct? I found it, you know, on the network that I was told to use to find chargers for my car. Yeah.

Well, I mean, that's a 2025 thing we can look forward to. That's it. Yeah. It's more standardization across the charging network.

And you are starting to see that. You are starting to see that.

Well, and now that everybody's adopting the Tesla standard— The Tesla standard. I think a big move. Hopefully GM will get on board with that as well as some of the others. I know Ford just— they shipped out adapters to every one of their EV customers.

Well, let's pause because we can influence change there. So fleet managers, when you're speccing your EVs, or your plug-in EVs, or your REVs, you make sure that that OEM includes as part of that shipment, an adapter for the Tesla charger and the various types of chargers you need. And if our folks are speccing that consistently, they will begin— they'll begin to do that. Right. So.

Well, and the same thing when you're speccing out your chargers. Yes. You know, speccing out the types of chargers you need and thinking— this is the hardest thing with EV right now because it's wild, wild west— but thinking ahead of time, where is EV going next year and 2 years from now? Because you buy that charger That's not a 1-year investment. That's a 5 to 10-year investment. Think about how often you switch out fuel pumps. Correct. So you're going to need to be thinking about that as this thing's got to last and be future-proof, right? In an industry that's changing every 6 to 9 months. Right, right. It's very difficult to do.

No technology change at all. You're talking about a lifecycle of about 10 years on most of those chargers. But with the technology change, you could put something in today that you can— 3, you might change, you might need to change it in 3 years, in 5 years.

And you may have to be okay with that. Like you think about laptops. You know, and computers, great example. It's not like a rapidly changing industry, yet the standard in the industry is every 3 to 5 years you're swapping out that machine, right? You know, it's not like it degrades. The copper's still copper, um, but just over time the performance is slower. It's not up to date. It doesn't have the latest technology, right? And so you have to plan for replacement to do that. Yeah, so I think the same thing is going to be true. We're going to have to start treating those chargers as more disposable than we do. Yes. The sucky thing about that is in a world where we're trying to talk about climate change and renewables and all that stuff, to think about chargers as throwaway infrastructure— Sure. Feels backwards, right? It's very counterintuitive. And frankly, it probably is. Yeah. So maybe there's a whole industry that pops up there about, you know, charger recycling. Right. Or at least retrofitting where we can go in and retrofit. Electricity is electricity. As long as you got the amperage, power, baby. Right? And so maybe that becomes another side industry, which say, you know, I know we sold you a 200-kilowatt application. Now we're going to upgrade that to a 400. Yeah, um, you know, double up on the—

that's a great point, and that needs to be in your replacement. That means all your fiscal planning. Uh, it's a great point because the man— the OEMs who are building the cars, they're going to build for what the latest technology is. Doesn't make sense to build for your backwards technology. All right, I, I, I think I have one here for you, um, and I'm even going to give a bonus prediction, and this is going to be the last one for me here. All right, all right. I think we're going to get settlement on who owns the data. The fleet or the vehicle owner or the OEM? Obviously, you know who I'm rooting for here. Let's go fleet. Let's go fleet. I'm going to predict that— how long has that case been sitting? Like, forever. For a long time, like years. This is going to be the year we get settlement on it. And here's the bonus: fleet's going to win. Fleet's going to win. I just can't see the argument for how the OEM owns that data.

But in any case, and the secondary piece of that, which is the right to repair, right? You know, so the right to the data and then ultimately the right to repair. Right. Yeah. Which is the one I'm down with that prediction. I won't, you know, I'm rooting for Fleet on that one too. Yeah. Now I'm not going to come out and predict that Fleet will win as much as it's common sense to all of us.

Big money has a play in this, right? Yeah.

They have a vote too. And unfortunately, you know, my faith in the judicial system is shaky right now. It depends on— I don't even know the jurisdiction he's in, but oh my goodness. Yeah, that actually matters more than anything else, it seems like. Yeah. Which is sad, right? Which just goes to kind of the state of affairs. So things that we learned in 2024 that I didn't know. Yeah. Unfortunately. Yeah. All right. Well, that's going to wrap it up for us today. I hope you enjoyed the episode. As always, love to hear from you. Just send us an email over to podcast@rtafleet.com. What do you think is going to happen in 2025? What were some of your favorite memories of 2024? We'd love to hear those and respond to you. And just thank you for all the people, all the readers and listeners who send in your comments. We love getting those. And as you know, we respond pretty quickly to those. So if you do have any questions you'd love to hear us tackle on the podcast, just email us podcast@rtafleet.com and Mark and I or one of the other co-hosts will dive in and hit that. Yeah. As always, thanks for tuning in.

Thanks, everyone. We hope you enjoyed the show.

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