Episode 183: How UCLA Electrified Their Fleet—Without Electrocuting Their Budget #fleetmanagement

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.

Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Fleet Success Show. I am joined today by Clinton Bench. I think you all know me, Mark Canton. Clinton is a very good friend and special guest of ours. He is the fleet manager, and I think you do transit or is it transportation over at UCLA as well? Clinton, say hello to everyone. Give me your exact title and let me know a little bit about what you do over there at UCLA.

Yes, Clinton Bench and all of the above, right? The exact title is Director of Fleet and Transit. Oh, okay. Yeah, throw on transit there. So at UCLA, we're within the administration side of the campus. So of course you've got your academic side. That's what most people would think of as, you know, UCLA, although we have a pretty high profile with respect to athletics. I'm sure some would—

Sure.

—question the quality of some of our programs. I don't know.

It's certainly a storied history. A storied history.

That's right. That's right. At least for those of us who are over 50. And then, you know, of course we have our administration, which includes everything from housing to facilities management to environmental health and safety. We're the events and transportation arm of that. And then I oversee fleet. Of course, and I think everybody here probably knows what that means, but also our small transit operation, which is marketed as Bruin Bus, and we have some paratransit services there as well.

So, well, let's pause on that for a second. Let's talk a little bit, because you're right, everyone does know what it means, and yet from organization to organization, there'll be slight tweaks or nuances about exactly what falls under the purview, right? So especially at universities, I find it to be a little bit more varying.

Even within the University of California system. And, you know, I don't think I'll get in trouble for saying that. I think all of us at each of the different campuses— we do have 10 campuses in the UC system— do wish that we had a little bit more standardization across how we manage our fleets. And there's a whole— I mean, we could go on for an hour about the different variations on just university fleet management. But from my perspective, I see one of the biggest issues, and hopefully I don't push us down too far in the weeds here, but just centralization of vehicle management. I think one of the biggest challenges that universities have is this, uh, is this issue of— I'll say academic freedom. It's not about academic freedom necessarily, but it's that concept, you know, where in big universities you've got all these professors who get to do whatever they want and teach however they want. They all have, especially in big universities, research labs set up, money coming in to support their research. And so academics can become very decentralized very quickly, and so it sort of bleeds over a little bit into some of the concepts of administration. And so we're very lucky here at UCLA to have had a lot of good support from our administrative vice chancellor in making sure that we have centralized management of our fleet of about— right now we're probably at about 950 self-propelled motorized land-based vehicles. We've got some trailers, of course, too, and even some vessels that travel on water. But all of them are, you know, we handle all the acquisition and maintenance, also all of the fueling, charging, etc., here on site. And so that's kind of an exciting— it's an exciting quality of what we do here at UCLA, being able to really be true stewards of the vehicles from, from, uh, birth to remarketing, right?

The whole, the whole nine yards. So that's, so that's interesting. So, man, you've said so much that I'm already curious about, but, uh, so do you remarket yourself or do you have to use— a lot of state schools use like a surplus, uh, like there's a surplus property department or something like that.

Well, so that's another interesting question. So we don't really, um, do a whole lot with surplus in the sense of, uh, I live also in southern Arizona close to the University of Arizona. I'm always impressed by their centralized surplus. I found a few, few cool, uh, pieces of furniture for my house there at their warehouse. But here everything really is handled through third-party auction houses when there's major equipment that needs to be remarketed. So We use a couple of different vendors who we've met at conferences like NAFINE and the National Association of State and University Fleets. Sure. And they do a great job for us. I mean, the reality is, you know, we're here in Westwood on the west side of Los Angeles. For those who may not be familiar with our region, we are— we're in a beautiful area. Yes, you are. Mountains and oceans close by. Yet, um, let's just say this isn't the part of town where you're going to find a lot of, uh, vehicle remarketing firms and body shops and that sort of thing. So, for, for— nor do we have a lot of room to be storing equipment. So, yeah, being able to rely on a good vendor who will send over a flatbed and, you know, once I get rid of it for you, sure, head on off to, you know, 60 miles away where there actually is room for auction setup. Or, or is some of these folks do a great job now too, not only doing online auctions but having those relationships set up in advance with folks they know might be interested in well taken care of public.

So that—

so I want to go back to this centralization concept if we could. You know, the guys and gals and I on the consultant side of things, we've done quite a few studies, you know, for universities. And we do regularly find that centralization would create a benefit, certainly economies of scale in different areas. There are exceptions. There are pieces that you have to sort of account for. When you say you're decentralized, it sounds like there's fleet management at every campus, but within your campus, are you managing the whole university's fleet or a portion of the fleet? Okay, so it's decentralized campus to campus, but the individual campus is centralized. Okay, that's, that's excellent.

But some campuses are very much decentralized, right? Right. What it really relies on, and I think this is a, this is a lesson I often share when we're in university work sessions, that sort of thing, with other fleets is it matters so much to educate folks higher up the chain. In our case, an administrative vice chancellor. In other cases, it might be a vice president or some executive director of a particular administrative department. Maybe it's the head of facilities. It could be whoever it is. Needs to understand, have at least a basic understanding of concept of asset management, specifically about fleet. And, you know, one of the biggest challenges we often have is the folks who are up the chain tend to be folks that envision themselves as gearheads, envision themselves, I'm a car guy, and it often is a guy, right? And so, you know, I always make sure to keep my vehicles over 13 years because I can drive into the ground. I do my own oil changes at home. And you have to, really, you do have to go over that hump. Yes, amen. Chancellor, he rides his bike to campus usually, so that's perfect for me because it's like, hey, you guys are the experts in maintaining vehicles and determining What's that, you know, magic mark, you know, for each individual vehicle when you've been able to maintain it well through preventative maintenance, but you've also magically been able to avoid any major component replacements so that you can get the top dollar for remarketing and move forward. And what we really want to move towards, too, is— and this is a real challenge— is not just being centralized in terms of identifying fleet acquisition or having full responsibility for fleet acquisition, maintenance, stewardship, and remarketing, but also for us to move into a role where the internal partner— let's say it's, you know, a skilled trades unit within facilities management— they're coming to us and saying, here is our use case, here is what we do each day, and here are the specialized needs of us transporting equipment to work sites. And we do this specialized task, you know, let's say once a month. We do this specialized task only once a year, and this one we do every day. Right. And leave it there. Leave it to our experts here in the Fleet Services Unit to say, all right, well, here is the particular specification of perhaps a pickup truck, or maybe it's a low-speed vehicle that's kind of outfitted like a pickup truck. And perhaps as well, you know, we're able to identify, gee, there are, you know, a couple of other skilled trades units, or even your own, that have similar vehicles already specified. What can we do to help you share those vehicles, to manage them, to get the most use out of them? And by the way, we're not going to spec the vehicle to do the thing that you do once a quarter. Right? You know, plumbers, it may happen that the masons have a truck that they use to do that kind of thing every week. Maybe you can borrow the mason's truck. Right. Never before that, right? It's one for you, right? So, yeah, we're getting there, we're getting there. And then be able to say to them, hey, here's your price, right? We're not going to have you just pay down the upfront capital cost over 7 years. And then have you in a position where you feel like, oh, I don't have any payment anymore. This is wonderful. I never need to replace my vehicle. No, let's figure out up front if we optimize that vehicle lifecycle cost, what is that optimized monthly cost going to be? And that's our answer to you, right? You're always going to pay that monthly cost. It's not going to be better when you've, you know, hit the 7-year mark of our expected depreciation schedule.

Yeah, Clinton, what you're talking about is like really kind of near and dear to my heart. It's something we talk about quite a bit actually, is there's this uphill battle in the industry to help people to understand that, I guess, fleet is a legitimate profession. I don't know the right way to say it.

No, it's— I think you're right.

You know, if there's a lack of a respect or an appreciation for the expertise and like you said, oh yeah, I can change my oil. Great. That makes you a fleet manager? Not exactly. You know, or the reverse, right? You know, from the other trades even sometimes. It's like, well, I know exactly what my truck needs to do and so forth. It's like, yeah, but let us help you. We can— this is what we do all day long. The same way, you know, you're fixing a pipe all day long or you're, you know, doing some sort of financial analysis all day long. You're an expert at that. This is what we do. We're an expert at this, you know, and it's tough to combat, but I think you make a great point. Like, what? What are your tips for people who maybe are finding this struggle, you know, in their fleet world? How, you know, because you don't— what you don't want to do is be the other extreme and say, hey, I know better than you, right? But you do need to kind of prove yourself a little bit so that you get the airtime that you need to be able to do your job properly, right?

Yeah, it's a good question. And from our perspective, at least at UCLA, what we found to be successful is number one, it has to be face-to-face time, I've found, because there's a level of trust. It's trust that needs to be built, right? Even if the person kind of is coming into the meeting with a sense that, oh, this is another bureaucracy that's going to get in the way of me doing things. I think when you sit down face-to-face with the other person and you describe to them You know, come at it from a perspective of we are here to be a service provider to you. We're here in order to make sure that you don't have to have anyone on your team who's spending their time worrying about getting vehicles out for preventative maintenance. You don't have to have anybody on your team that needs to develop relationships with upfitters and OEMs and such. We are a part of, describe yourself as part of their team, right? You know, and we're just another department that's serving you. And I think taking the conversation from there then to say, here are some of the benefits that we provide as, you know, as a result of, you know, you having a specialized fleet unit on your campus and in your company. One, let's identify the institutional risks, safety risks, insurance-related risks, et cetera, that we all have to manage. It's our job to protect you and your team, right? And allow you to focus on the work that you're a subject matter expert in. And sometimes that requires us to work with OEMs, work with upfitters, and do it in collaboration with our insurance and risk management department to make sure that you're getting a vehicle that reduces risks substantially. And for you to go and take that time to learn about those particular rules and policies and procedures is not a good use of your time. Then, We are here to provide you then with state-of-the-art telematics, right? We're able to identify when your vehicle is likely having a component, is more likely to have a component failure. If your team members are in a rush trying to get back and forth to a job and they don't wanna report a check engine light, we'll know the check engine light is on. We're going to be there to protect you and your asset. That we've assigned you and make sure that it stays in service, right? And demonstrate as well, you know, through the data we have, and this is of course now calling on having a good FMIS, having a good telematics system where you can literally bring up on the screen, here is our average downtime when we're doing a preventative maintenance job. Look at it, it's 2 hours, right? And you, and for these particular internal partners, the amount of time that a vehicle is actually down for a true component repair, we're talking 0.5% of all potential uptime. And so this is us supporting you and being able to not worry about this piece of equipment to be able to do your job. And I think that kind of just common understanding when they hear that you understand what is important important to them, which is minimizing costs, minimizing downtime, and even maybe giving them a little bit of a bonus on the side to say, hey, you can manage your, manage your vehicles better, know where they're at. We can help you with potentially optimizing the assignment of the vehicles. Oh, by the way, we also have automated dispatching that we use for our shared use motor pool. What do you think about using that for the vehicles that are assigned to your large department? Can you imagine the benefit of not having to have person X, maybe in your parts room, also managing keys at the same time? Let's use an automated dispatch unit.

I love that. What you're doing, you're talking customer, you're talking stakeholder satisfaction, right? Customers in particular. And some key things you've hit there is, you know, the czar approach is usually not the best approach. I feel for some fleets who are sometimes obligated to that approach by regulation. But certainly your mission is to support their mission, and that's what you need to sell them and to prove to them and to support them. And if you do that, if you make their life easier consistently, what you'll do is you'll get back that sort of that respect and that appreciation for your efforts and your work, and then they'll start coming to you. And they'll start leaning on you. And we've hit so many pieces on there, you know, deploying technology. The big one that you touched that I don't think enough fleet managers are zoned in on is utilization management, which is, which is huge. You mentioned, you know, motor pools or something that's on my mind. I feel like there are, from an industry perspective, not deployed nearly enough or nearly as effectively as they could be. I know from looking at the data, motor pools always get more value out of their life and have better utilization patterns. So, I mean, we've been on so much there. That's, that's exactly right. So that's super interesting. So let me, let me ask you this, though. You guys are doing a lot of kind of, I'll say, cutting edge or certainly out in front when it comes to technologies of various sorts over there at UCLA. You've kind of been, you know, I met you, I don't know how many years ago now. I think at Massive the first time. It was NCSFA.

Um, and 6 or 7 years ago at least, I think.

I really wanted to be out in front. I remember you're pushing then, and then I look at you now and you are, right? So tell me about some of the— what are some of the cool initiatives you got going on over at UCLA?

Well, I, I appreciate you, you did the kind words. I think what it also means is we're right out on the forefront of making brand new mistakes, so, so we're learning a lot as we go. Um, and And a lot of what we're focusing on is vehicle electrification and the requisite EVSE, electric vehicle supply equipment that needs to come along with that. And let me tell you, we've made plenty of mistakes. And it, but it goes along with what we were just talking about in terms of good customer care and helping them understand that, you know, you're a step ahead of them in making sure that their vehicles are available to use. We've actually run into pro— I'll start with the problem. Which is usually not the way I'm gonna, you know, start with it, but I think it's demonstrative. Our hospital, you know, major research institution runs a number of patient transport vans and they're all battery electric now, minivuses, you know, excited about that. However, we've gotten to a point where they're literally not able to, fully charge all of those vehicles each day and come back in the morning with what they want, which is a full state of charge for each of the vehicles. Now, have we run into the bigger problem of them not actually being able to meet their, their own customer demands yet? No, thank heavens. But it was certainly incumbent upon us, and I think we kind of fell down a bit on the job in terms of making sure that we had adequate high-speed charging equipment within easy access, easy range of the hospital. Now, part of that is because too, I think we didn't take enough time to develop a strong set of policies for the operation and maintenance of our EBSE in advance. And, you know, we find ourselves in these little, find ourselves in the pickle sometimes of, okay, we decided to, you know, pilot a relationship with an outside vendor and have them handle all of the maintenance. But, you know, we didn't necessarily take care to write in the right kind of service level agreements to that, to that contract to ensure that we're always going to have all those chargers open. So anyway, those are all challenges we have. But at the same time, we're really excited about some of the successes we've had in terms of, one, just the broader vehicle electrification. We're up at about 40% battery electric vehicles now. And of course, that includes a lot of our— that includes all of our low-speed vehicles, our neighborhood electric vehicles, which make up a good part of that 40%. But— vehicles, right?

I mean, is that right? Is my math right? Yeah, you're approaching 500 vehicles. Wow.

And that's amazing. And been testing out a lot of really interesting new specs of battery electric mobile instrument reprocessing unit for the hospital where they go and upgrade all of their scalpels and stuff. The sky's the limit. I don't know, I'm just— but going around to the different clinics and reprocessing the different medical devices that they have. It's marketing a nice little UCLA Bruins low-speed vehicle that was purchased by our strategic communications department to do promotions for our students. A lot of cool specifications, refrigerated units, testing out refrigerated units for our catering. Now, some of the exciting things that we're doing though, with respect to EVSE is hopefully by about August. And we're kind of working privately with a, a vendor partner to implement a first-of-its-kind microgrid at our, at our light-duty fleet yard that is powered by the grid itself, of course, certainly hooked into the grid, but also has attached to it hydrogen fuel cell generator and of course a substantial battery stack in that microgrid. So we'll be in a position to test out the potential for just completely independent power generation. But what that also does is puts us in a position of not having to be quite as worried, let's say during the be on a hot day in July. Luckily, it doesn't get too terribly hot here right where we are on campus. But we also don't have anywhere near the power generation capacity on our campus that we need being an old campus. So let's say it's, you know, 4:00 in the afternoon, you know, all the air conditioners are on, but we still need to charge our vehicles. How can we utilize that microgrid to reduce the demand on the nearby electrical panels. Also just were awarded a $32 million grant including about 30% match from us from the California Transportation Commission to do a number of things including fully electrify the rest of our bus fleet and also build a new transit hub next to the subway station that's opening soon just in time for the Olympics. But even more exciting, perhaps the folks on, you know, listening to this podcast is testing out California's first installation of wireless vehicle charging. So we're working with a company called Electreon to pilot wireless vehicle chargers, both stationary within our transit yard at our new bus transfer facility and also dynamic wireless charging in-road. So as the vehicle is moving up a couple of streets in our campus that we've identified for the pilot, buses will be able to charge while in motion. So hopefully I'll have more to come back and talk to you about very soon and tell you the pluses and minuses, hopefully the great success and not, you know, a, oh boy, Hola.

If you're looking for fleet experts and former fleet managers sharing their best practices and advice, networking opportunities with hundreds of fleet professionals, and live hands-on training sessions and workshops designed to help you take your fleet to the next level, then you need to register for RTA Connect 2025. It's the fleet event of the year. Join us September 22nd through 26th in Las Vegas and get the tips, tricks, and tools you need to help your fleet succeed. Visit www.rtafleet.com/connect to learn more.

Definitely do an episode, you know, at that time that, hey, this is what I would do again the same exact way, and this is what I would do different. Because obviously what you're talking about, you know, a lot of fleet managers are kind of going through, they're trying to figure out and at various stages How do I transition to, you know, an EV fleet, right? And, you know, and maybe in certain use cases it might actually be hydrogen or something else, but nonetheless, EV is still all the rage and it's going to be the rage and it's not going anywhere. There's some use cases at this point where it's well established as clearly the right choice. And, you know, we'll see what happens with some of the other use cases. What you have kind of to your advantage from that perspective is this campus setting probably increases the percentage of use cases where it really makes a heck of a lot of sense. It's true. It's true.

Yeah, we're in a lucky spot there in terms of the applications being very reasonable for probably 95% of our fleet.

I'm super pumped to hear more about the microgrid grid as well. I worked with a a client on the opposite coast who— they also made the decision that that was the way to go. They felt they needed to kind of protect themselves from potential power outages on the one hand, but also just wanted to be a good neighbor and not create undue demand. I mean, in your location, I'm sure that's part of it. At a high level, can you just let— like, what went into that decision to pursue the microgrid option?

So in our case, most of our built facilities, built structures are over 50 years old. Here on campus, some going back 100 years. So the power infrastructure that was built into, say, our parking structures, as well as even our fleet yard and our transit yard, we're assuming power demands from up to 50 years ago, even 20 years ago, right? You're only thinking about just making sure that the lights are on, the elevators can run. You're not even necessarily planning to, you know, power Wi-Fi units and cell phone mini towers, et cetera. So, so what we're finding is that it's not so much the, it, it's not so much the potential for installing electric vehicle chargers in these facilities. That's not so much the challenge. Of course, it's always a challenge to, you know, make sure that the, you got the electricians lined up with the masons, et cetera, to get everything all you know, put in place. But if you literally don't have the juice to, to coming into those buildings in the first place, you're, you're retrofitting the structure itself to be able to supply more power. And right now too, we have, we're lucky to have an onsite power generation, uh, uh, cogeneration plant, but even that is only able to supply about 60% of the university's needs. So collaborations with our local utility provider, are critical. And in the meantime, and also in the long run, we want to be able to minimize the substantial investment that's going to be necessary to run additional conduit, bigger power lines. I am not an electrical engineer, so pardon my—

You're trying to improve to a certain degree, if I'm putting words in your mouth, right? You're being prepared, recognizing Yeah, we're gonna need more power now. We're gonna need a lot more power now, but we're going to need even more power, kind of a thing.

Well, let's use it, let's use it most effectively, right? Right. We're going to need more, but we, we're, we're not in any position to build out enough electric vehicle chargers so that every vehicle, every electric vehicle has its own charger and that they can all run at the same time. That would be a huge waste of resources, huge waste of resources. And so Between having a reliable load management software, and right now we're using a company out of Orange County called EV Gateway, working with them to develop the algorithms to help us distribute load appropriately. And then also making sure that we look at the use cases. I mean, it's an operational question too. We have another partner that's helping us with that, at the use cases based on our telematics to understand when those vehicles are most likely to be down and needing to charge. And this is where, in all honesty, you end up needing a consultant partner in most cases because the modeling that's going to be necessary to look at, all right, those temporal time-based demands for charging as well as the quantity of charging that you need, as well as the location where those vehicles are garaged, and then say, all right, what's the best— what are the best tools to make sure you have that power delivery? Maybe it is microgrids, maybe it's just straight from the grid. That's a lot more than most of us fleet managers and transit managers are qualified to do.

So even if you can do it, like, what about your day job, right?

I mean, even if you know, that's exactly right. And that's where we are too. 'Cause the funny thing is, we are at UCLA, right? We actually do have humans here on this campus who can do all that, right? But do we really have the bandwidth?

Right, exactly. Yeah, quick little side comment there that you're making a point, which is a lot of fleet folks, I think, see consultants as like a threat. And ironically, I have found the most successful and the best to see them, they see them completely differently. They see them as a tool, right? It's one of the tools in their toolbox and they know when they need to go, hey, I have this one-off kind of project, you know, that's when you should pick up, know when you need to, know when you need help.

Know when you need help. Yes. Know when you shouldn't try and write your own fleet management information system and rely on a great partner like RTA, right? Thank you.

Yeah, no, that's true. So, all right, well, we'll have to see. I have a feeling this is going to trigger a lot of thought and question, and maybe we'll have you back on, like, an EV-specific episode. But I want to hit a couple more topics with you if I could. First of all, go backwards.

I should have started here backwards.

Okay, I usually start here, but you just said so many cool things up front and I wanted to jump into them. Let's go back a step. How did you end here? How did you get into fleet? Most people didn't wake up one morning and say, you know, Mom or Dad, I want to— when I grow up, I want to be a fleet manager or like you said, a transit manager, transportation. I fell into fleet, as most of our listeners know, from the transportation side. But then, you know, you even have to fall into transportation, if we're being honest. How do you kind of walk us through it high level? Like, what were your stops? How did you get to this situation that you're in now?

Well, so I was always kind of a transportation junkie even as a kid. I loved collecting road atlases and city maps and driving my dad crazy while he was taking us on family trips and saying, "No, no, you need to— don't take the Beltway around Atlanta. I want to see that cool 8-lane, 10-lane road." Grew up in it. I grew up in Indiana, so like heading to Florida back and forth each year and other family vacations. But anyway, I love trains, love buses, love the idea of mass transportation. Went to college, got a degree in civil engineering in Massachusetts, and then actually had an internship while I was in college for the state. And yeah, the history sort of wrote itself from there for 25 years, effectively worked there for different agencies within the State Department of Transportation. Until 2015. And at that point, it was time for a shift, both in terms of my profession and my spouse. He was done with the New England winters, was more of a West Coast guy. And so ended up coming here to UCLA, partly because I was excited about being able to be in charge of my own small transit system, which I still love doing. And the fleet side was sort of, well, I think I can handle that. I mean, I do have skills in data analytics. I understand the basic ideas of mobility, but boy, I, I was in for— I was myself in for a shock. And I'll give a shout out to, to So for example, National Association of State and University Fleets, NASSF, but these professional organizations are, I think, perhaps even more important in the fleet world because you're right, Mark, it's not super common. You'd hope that somebody, you know, is in high school going, wow, the idea of being a fleet manager someday and overseeing a fueling system You know, managing the personalities of vehicle technicians. That's where I want to go. There's not many— there's not many degrees in fleet management, right? Not many master's programs. So CAFM, I guess that's your master's program, right?

So, right. Yeah. And thank God for that, for filling that space. Right. And there's a couple of others, but that's one of the points I want to beat up quite a bit on this show is You know, you can get transportation and degrees in transit and things really— there's nothing out there for fleet. And whether you, you came, you know, into fleet sort of similar to you and I, where it was from an adjacent industry, let's say, you know, I was certainly from transportation and logistics. And like you mentioned, the work you've done, and so there's obviously a lot in common and you learn it. Um, thankfully I was a, you know, I loved working on vehicles and I had some just personal maintenance. But if you come over from that side, you got the CRFM and maybe a couple others, and that's pretty much it. And, you know, as you know, there's a lot of folks in our industry who kind of work their way up from, you know, turning wrenches on the shop floor. And, and those guys and gals didn't really have much either. Hey, here you are, you're in charge of people one day, uh, go on this replacement plan with, with virtually, you know, no training or or room guidance of any kind. Again, other than these roles that are filled by our various associations. So it's an interesting thing. I've been thinking about it so much lately, and I'll ask your opinion. I'm actually going to think I do a show with this with a couple of folks. But I mean, I'm at the point now where I feel like, you know, people have been asking me, well, when do you know it's time to leave? And I think one answer might be if they don't let you get to a fleet conference all year, for years and that kind of— I mean, there's always exceptions, you know, I'm open to that. But boy, if you can't participate in any of them, that might be a pretty good sign that that's not the right place.

I don't know. Or you don't have any sort of— yeah, I won't name names, but, you know, I have a lot of colleagues that I sit down with, you know, maybe it's at a NAFA conference or maybe it's, just in another professional setting. And I hear from them, I can't get a cent out of my city council, or I can't get a cent out of my CFO. They've kind of locked down the capital plan. They believe that fleet vehicles, it's my job to fix them. It's not my job to talk about acquiring them. And I think if you're in a place where If you love vehicle maintenance and it continues to still be fun, yeah, stay in it. And I guess it's always a challenge to see if you can fix your 1998 Dodge Ram 200 pickup truck. Good luck finding parts. But I do think there's a lot that's— it's disappointing to hear other folks who we can't be at the forefront of the industry and using all of these new technologies that give us so much insight on how to provide better customer care to our partners. And I understand too that unfortunately this to some extent means automation, and that's a challenge I think that we need to face head-on, and we need to find better ways to talk as an industry about how automation is inevitable, especially if we're in a government fleet. There's always the opportunity to say, all right, well, there's private companies out there that can manage the fleet and do it in a more efficient way. We need to stay ahead of that trend and understand that our fleet shops are never gonna have the same ratio of employees or especially technicians to vehicles that, you know, we saw 15 years ago. It's just not the way it's going to be. But there still are a lot of great opportunities for folks to be highly engaged in fleet and the, I think one of the things that we need to focus most squarely on is how do we communicate, especially to younger fleet professionals, the kinds of skills in terms of programming, skills in terms of data analytics, and that kind of problem-solving approach that comes from marrying these mounds of data that you get from telematics and other sources. Into making good decisions for your internal partners. And we've actually found, you know, that we've had a number of folks who, you know, they never touched a computer, you know, and only the manager was handling input into the FMIS, you know, about the maintenance activities for that day. And a lot of fear up front. And we said, look, dive in headfirst. We're not going to— you're not going to get fired if you don't get it exactly right in the next 2 months. But holy moly, you know, we've got some awesome techs who also have come back to us on their own, come back to their superintendent and said, thank you so much for showing me how to utilize the FMIS better because it also, it gives them more information. Like, I thought I could always, I knew these vehicles inside and out just like they were my son or my nephew or whatever, daughter. But, oh, but it's easy to forget that I did do, you know, this particular repair 4 years ago. And, you know, I go back to my notes and I can see, you know, this is the diagnosis I made before, you know, it's having the same problem again. Anyway, it can be exciting too to see that.

I mean, that's a great point. I mean, I know I often emphasize how much value the technology should create for the leaders and the managers. But you make a great point. I mean, a good system— I certainly hope ours does this— you know, it makes the lives of every position, you know, better and easier and more productive. And that's a really important selling point because you're right, if we're being honest, there is that fear. It's a natural human fear, fear of change. But there's also this— people who haven't used tech their whole life tend to have a fear of tech, if we're being honest. People who've used a single system for too long tend to have a fear of using a different system, you know.

That's the truth. Or going from the server-based, on-site version, on-prem version to the cloud-based version. Oh my gosh, those keystrokes I learned 10 years ago don't work anymore. Well, give it a shot. Give it a shot.

No time like the present, man. If you're honest, you will find that. That it helps you. That's, that's so true. That's so true. All right, let me hit you with one or two more things here, and that you've been so gracious with your time. I don't— I promise I won't keep you here all day. But, you know, you know, obviously, uh, you and I, like we mentioned earlier, I know I've met you through NASIF. You're also pretty involved with NAFA. Uh, are you— do you have any formal positions with those? Are you just— I know you've talked— you talk— you always seem to have a speaking engagement. You give us you give back to the industry quite a bit. Um, you know, talk to me a little bit about that, where, you know, what are you doing currently, where your passions lie around that? Although, is there another organization that maybe I'm not familiar that you're involved with? You know, that sort of— Sure.

Yeah, it could be that I just have trouble saying no. Um, at least that's what I've been— that's what I've been told by my family and my therapist, right? Uh, but, uh, to sci-fi, answer to your question is yes. Um, Really, we have a great group here in Southern California especially, but, but also in surrounding areas for our local networking group for NAFA. And in California, of course, especially Southern California, with all of those specialized regs that we have from the California Air Resources Board. It's an important local group. Yeah, as public fleets, we're still, we're still subject to the Advanced Clean Fleets regulation. So just being able to send a Teams message over to, you know, give a shout out to Bradley Northrup who's on the, who's now on the NAFA nationwide board. But, you know, just being able to kind of share these, hey, how did you manage to log into that CARB, the data upload site? Did you use an Excel file or did you, but those are, it really helps to have those relationships that you build through NAFA. But then also, you never know what you're going to— never know what you're going to learn from, you know, some of the educational sessions, hearing about— it's what's helpful. I find even in our local networking group, our Southwest region, is there's always somebody on the cutting edge of each topic, right? We don't all have to be on the cutting edge, so we can go and listen to LA City Sanitation, and they can talk about what they're doing in terms of, say, low emissions dump trucks, right? That may not be something we're brave enough to go take on right off the bat, but hey, that's their specialty. NASUF is great too, National Association of State and University Fleets. I mean, that's what really, I think I was going there before when I was talking about a different topic, but they were the ones, that's a smaller organization. I've served on the board for a couple of years, not currently serving on the board there now, but just having these conferences where it's just 60, 70 people, you can easily find an hour to go sit with another university fleet manager who can basically tell me, here's what you need to learn in the first year, the second year, the third year. I mean, I don't know what I would've done without those relationships that I built. But yeah, I mean, I think also just staying engaged even within your own company, some of the, in my case, institution. I lead our Sustainable Fleets Working Group throughout the state, and it's kind of just become our fleet rap group and sharing our trials and tribulations and providing support to one another. But even just staying engaged in management development courses and that sort of thing builds relationships that you're always surprised later, oh gosh, there's a trust. There's a level of trust there already built with the internal partner who's going to need to trust you to get them the right vehicles for the right job at the right time. And yeah, it's having that initial trust already built gets you over a few humps that could be otherwise pretty difficult.

So definitely something you'd put way up on your list of maybe a new fleet professional.

Oh, absolutely. Just jump in. You don't— and the nice thing about fleet too is no one is expecting you to come as an expert. It's almost like there's a little bit of a— if you're full of yourself, you're probably not going to fit in very well. If you're coming into it with an open heart and an open mind and saying, help me, you'll have 15 people jumping at the opportunity. I love that about our industry.

I got to tell you.

It's pretty neat about something about the personalities and the characters we draw.

Um, characters. Yes, we do draw characters. That's exactly right. Name your top 5 characters, Mark. No, don't do that.

You also hit on something else I've kind of been thinking about recently, which is, you know, there is, you probably didn't want more than one. Like you just talked about these different organizations you've been part of. And they each have this overlap, but they each have served a different role as well in your own development, your own education, right? You know, like you said, your own, you know, and that's interesting, right? Because NASIF is really lives in sort of in, let's say, your specialization, right? It's state and university. And there's a lot of overlap, a lot of commonality of the kinds of things, the functionality. Motor pool is going to be much more important in that organization than maybe some of the municipal or some some of the other fleet, right? So you get that specialization element in maybe one conference or one industry, and then you get maybe a broader view, uh, you know, in a, in let's say NAFA National, right? And, and participating there. Then you get all of the, the sort of local sort of geographical, uh, special needs and things of that nature, you know, by being involved in the regional NAFA, right? So I, I think that that's really important for people to hear. Like, you, you know, you— it's, it's a really good idea to, to, to be part of more than one thing and try to specifically call out those elements, right? You want the broad view, you want to know what the whole fleet industry is kind of working on, because you may get ideas from tangent industries, right? I've seen that all the time. But then you also want to get your kind of regional and, and maybe like your specialization. Like, these are the folks who do the same kind of work or maybe are supporting the same kind of stakeholders that you are supporting and that sort of a thing. Does that follow?

What do you think? It does. And frankly, you know, I'll admit, you know, truck upfitting is not the thing I'm most passionate about. It's very important for our fleet management unit here. But, you know, I've got a fellow named Tom Poveromo who does all of our specifications And he loves being engaged in MTA, MTA. He loves attending the annual truck conference there in Indianapolis. And I think, you know, making sure that you always have development plans with your own team members too and listening, you know, just taking time to say, what excites you? Where would you like to fit in? What's your passion within this industry? I think keeps them rolling too with the 80% of the time that may be spent on just the day-to-day, you know, turning the— cranking the wheel. Yeah, so I mean, we have others who are just— got a couple great new staff members, new last few years, But, but my gosh, you know, bringing their kind of natural proclivity to knowing how to do coding and knowing how to do, you know, website development and such and just having a natural sense of how to get into the weeds with our fleet management information system, you know, awesome. All right, go to the user conferences, you know, for those people. And it's interesting to watch one of the fellows who's our motor pool manager, but learning a lot more about broader data management for our FMIS, just sent him to a national user conference on the FMIS, and he came back just re-energized, right? You know, with so many little clues about how he can make his day-to-day life more efficient. So yeah, always good opportunities available.

This is really perfect because just sort of naturally here, I think you've hit on all of the 4 pillars of Fleet Success, right? Most folks that are, you know, who listen to our channel, we believe in this concept. I mean, you talked earlier today about risk management. You clearly talked about resource efficiency and the importance of telling your story, using data, using technology. You talked a lot about customers, and stakeholder satisfaction, making sure that they know you're their partner, that you're in there, you're in the trench with them, you're there to help them, your mission is to help them fulfill their mission. And now you're talking really about some key elements of intentional culture, right? You talk— what is your career path? How can I make sure you're doing work that you're passionate about so that you're happy here, right? And, um, it's not surprising to me, and you get involved, and you know, the logical culture of the industry. I mean, it's not surprising to me that you've had the success you've had. I feel like you've kind of intuitively, or, or not, and, you know, um, kind of landed on these key pieces, and that's what you're executing on, and that's why you guys are having such tremendous success. And I, I think at least it's part of it.

Um, that's kind of you, Mark. And I— there's so much more to learn. On that last point, I know I don't spend enough time You know, on that intentional culture development, I, that I, if it's, if it's 10% that I spend, I probably should be spending 20%, but that's okay, right? You, that's part of resetting yourself with your colleagues and, and seeing these kinds of opportunities be so valuable to individual team members. It reminds you to say, all right, let me go from 10% to 12%. Let me, let me, let me spend a little more time next year after that, right? So it's incremental. We're all learning.

We're all, we're all just trying to, trying to grow, trying to grow, get better every day, get better every day, always learning. My dad, I remember, God bless him, you know, he was getting up there in age and he was getting to later in life and he used to say to me, dying and learning, Kenton, dying and learning, you know, and his message. That's right. Never stop. Well, I mean, Clinton, this has been an absolute pleasure. I've always enjoyed talking with you, but this conversation was really neat. I, I, can I, can I get your commitment? Can we have you back? I want to, I want to have more than once because I want to have you back after some of these initiatives and some of them might, but maybe we can deep dive. Maybe if we get some feedback from some listeners, we can deep dive some topics. Um, this has been an absolute—

yeah, I'd love to, love to get some other folks, um, from the University of California too who've done some other cool things, uh, on your show in the future and Yeah, I appreciate the opportunity.

Really do.

And I appreciate everybody who, um, took the time to listen to me ramble. All right.

Well, with that, we'll say goodbye, everybody. Hope you all have a wonderful day. And, uh, we'll talk to you next time.

We hope you enjoyed the show. If you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others, post about it on LinkedIn, or leave a review. Want to learn more about our fleet management software Fleet 360? Check us out at rtafleet.com. If you want to learn more about having your fleet evaluated by our consulting team, go to fleetconsulting.com.