Episode 210: How to Win NAFA's 100 Best Fleets: Insider Advice from a Longtime Judge #nafa #podcast

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 Fleet Success Show with your hosts, Josh Turley, Steve Salzgeber.

Hey there.

And today we have a very— Steve is always a very special guest, but obviously an alumni of the show and has been one of our hosts for many, many episodes. I think 100 you had under your belt.

70.

But we brought you in today as we were talking about it's 100 Best season with NAFSA. The applications are open and we thought, hey, you're going to be in office. Let's, let's have a little chat and give some advice to people who might be on the fence. People who are thinking about applying and just don't know what to do. So I'll hit you with a few questions and talk about NFA 100 Best. So for those who don't know what NFA 100 Best is, it's the, you know, NFA is the premier fleet association in the country and they have a program that they got from Tom Johnson. This is a long time running program that he used to run. They've now kind of taken over posthumously for Tom as they recognize 100 of the best public fleets in America. There's an application process you go through and they have judges. You guys have put a ton of work into this over the years as you've tried to really give it some rigidity and just some structure so that it's not totally loosey-goosey and, you know, a popularity contest that it might have been in the past. As much as we, we love that, you know, and how it used to be, it's— it needed some structure, right? And you guys have done a great job in creating that, uh, and creating that in the application process. But you've seen— how many years have you been doing the judging?

This is my 7th. Okay, 7th year, I think. Yeah.

And so one of the things that NAPA did really early on was like, Tom used to do this all by himself, uh, and then they brought in—

Tom actually brought me in just to kind of help out.

I go back to too many applications at some point.

Yeah.

And so he brings you in, the NFA takes over, and they start bringing in other judges because there's just a lot of applications that are going through. And because we're trying to narrow this down to the top 100 fleets. So you have to imagine if you have 100 fleets that get awards, there's a lot of fleets that don't. So there's a lot of applications you have to sift through.

Any given year we have close to 200, probably double the 100.

And it's only been getting more. Like, I remember it used to be 130. Yeah, it was 160. And now it's over 200. I remember the first year I did it for Tom, I barely got 100, right?

You're like, oh, so they all won.

And then it's really just a matter of ranking, right? Um, but you've seen a lot of applications. You've seen a lot of applications come through over 7 years, hundreds of applications every year. Uh, just off the top of your head, when you think about the ones that place really well, maybe not even the winners, you know, because the winners— I, I have to imagine this is really difficult to pick a winner every single year. It is.

It's getting more difficult every year. And we keep suggesting maybe we need to go do site visits at this point.

Yeah, it's getting that just to kind of see it. Like, just that little extra edge.

Well, as a consultant, you know, working for RTA and seeing hundreds of fleets. Yeah. Sometimes I'll get to 100 best, I'll see the banners on the wall and I'm going, oh my gosh, this should not have been 100 best fleet.

Right.

I know that sounds terrible. Or I get to one that was ranked lower and I'm going, oh man, this should have been a real high-ranked fleet. You know, that's kind of the challenge. There's a little bit of— you try and make this as objective as possible, but until you really see where the rubber meets the road out there, you really can't do a decent job. Totally.

So there is a little bit of art to it.

Yeah, there is.

Which is, you know, and how well can you tell your story? Right. How well can you tell your story in the format that NAFHA has? And we'll talk a little bit about that format. But being able to see a fleet in person definitely would help, you know, kind of solidify some things.

Especially maybe the top 2 or 3.

Yeah, that makes sense. Maybe even, yeah, top 5.

Yeah.

Because I have to imagine that the margin of error between those starts getting really razor thin.

Oh yeah, we're out multiple decimal points.

Yeah, that's tight. That's, you know, and for people who apply and you don't rank as high as you wish you would, like, that's the piece that is just kind of like a— take it, I guess, as some consolation— is just how tight those margins are, really are between— if you're number 50 and you're like, oh man, I really wanted to be in the top 50, I want to be number 45, well, you probably weren't very far off.

No, it's really close. In fact, we look at that every year. We've had to put tiebreakers into our matrix that we use. We have a rubric that we use and we've had to do a number of things, you know, where you placed last year compared to this year. And, you know, so we've really tried to make it as fair as possible. But there's so many dynamics that happen. You know, you may not have applied last year, but then you apply the year after or someone really whiz-bang applies that throws everybody down. And so you could go, you could be 2 one year and 15 the next year and go, what happened? I did better things and I dropped. And it does.

'Cause it's always kind of like, you have to assume it's a ranking. So you're always grading on a curve.

That's right. Right.

Your score might've gone from an 89 to a 92, but the rest of the class caught up. And so that's always tough to kind of plan around. So as you've gone through, you looked at all these applications, What would you say separates maybe like the top 10? Because it's tough to differentiate between maybe 10 and 1. What would you say separates the top 10 from the bottom 10? You know, the 90 through 100 versus the 10 through 1?

Well, first of all, you have to answer every single question. We actually get applications where people don't answer every question.

That seems like a kind of a gimme.

Yeah.

All right. So be thorough. Number 1.

Be thorough. Okay. Second, you want to make sure you have key metrics. Some of those are kind of provided for you in the application, some of them in previous webinars we've done, things like that. So you should have a pretty good idea what the key metrics are, like fleet availability, preventive maintenance compliance, things like that. And then in your application, make sure you articulate exactly what it is and show a proven track record. For example, give me a 5-year glide path. You know, what have you been doing with fleet availability? Where did you start? Where are you at today? Because those are the things— that's really what this is about, is continuous improvement, you know, and showing that you have a plan. Other things, you know, give us examples. I mean, there's no reason you can't attach things, you know, and give us an annual report with graphs and charts and, you know, things like that.

And just for, you know, for reference, if you haven't gone through the application process, there's 12 questions and it's basically paragraph answers, right? You're limited to, I think, a certain number of characters in each of those answers. Don't get crazy wordy, but there's not a spot to like put in images and things like that in the form. So what you need to do is, to Steve's point, do attachments. You can attach graphs, you can attach KPIs, you can attach full-on reports if you want to.

Pictures of your team. You can attach pictures of your shop, anything that the judges can really look at Objectively, the more information we get, the better it is for us.

And keep in mind, they're not coming out to your site, so whatever you can do to give them information as if they were there would be really helpful.

Yeah, show us how highly organized your shop is, how the lines are painted yellow, your brand new lifts, you know, things like that. Those things are really helpful as we're going through those, especially when you get to those small margins that you're talking about.

And you're sitting there looking at 2 applications and they both answered the 12 questions really nicely, now you're into the addendums, right? And who has prettier looking charts? Who has data that's really easy to see? Who has really nice, you know, you're looking at the pictures of the teams. And it is, that's where the margin calls really come into play. 'Cause as much as you try to make it objective, it still ends up being very subjective, you know, so.

And I always tell people, it always reminds me when I originally met Tom, One of the conversations he had with me years ago was, "I love having you speak at my conferences because you always tell stories." Tell stories. People relate to stories, and if you can articulate a story in your application or even in the addendum that you provide, those just, they make things real.

It brings it home. It shows you what's going on, and it's like, "Oh yeah, I've been in a situation like that before. I can appreciate how hard that is to do because I've done that." You know, and it does. You got to tell the story and be able to really demonstrate to the judges why you're doing better than you were last year, the challenges that you've overcome, and why you're worthy of a 100 Best Fleet ranking.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Be thorough. So my favorite one, that's the number one. Just answer all the questions.

I always— it always amazes me when somebody will turn in half an application. I'm going, well, maybe they got too busy. Busy and they just didn't bother to withdraw it. I—

and I could see that, you know, you get busy and you've got 2 months to do it. So, and— but we're natural procrastinators. I know how this works. Um, but as you're sitting there trying to answer the questions too, I could see somebody starting the application and they're like, oh, I'm not really sure how to answer that, and then just skipping it rather than just not answering it.

I would say be as concise as possible. We've got applications 100 pages long, so those are tough to get through. Yeah, so yeah, be concise.

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Well, because what will happen is, you know, I'm just— this is human nature. If somebody drops a 100-page report in front of me, I have to skim it. I just don't have enough time because from the time you guys close the application window in January, right, end of January, we've got to pick the winners and do all that by INE, which is typically mid to late April.

I think we have to have it done by February 28th.

And you guys have a deadline before that, like 30, yeah, 30 days. Yeah, so it's, it's tight. So if you give them a 100-page and their timeline alone dictates they're going to skim it. They're not going to read all that detail you put in there. And then you're hopefully, you're just basically giving it up to them to skim and find the things that matter most. And then you're just, you may as well just leave it up to luck at that point.

The other thing is know where you are when it comes to your metrics. You know, what is the industry best practice? You know, we have people all the time that think they're really doing great with PM compliance at 70%. Well, you might be compared to where you were, but if you were to outsource your fleet, they wouldn't— you'd accept nothing less than 95%, you know. So make sure you know where you are relative to, you know, those known best practices in the industry.

Yeah, well, and I really understand, um, what they are, right? I think a lot of people just assume that it's, oh, I, you know, I've talked to my buddy or I talked to my other peer and they're at this, so I must be doing better than them, and they got, you know, placed number 35 last year. Well, yeah, but that was one metric and that one metric actually is keeping them from being number 25. Right. So it's— you definitely have to understand what the actual industry best practices. Yeah.

Same thing with labor rates, things like that. And we have people that will put in a $35 labor rate and think they're very highly efficient. And we're just— if you see some of our podcasts, you know that that's not the way to go. That just makes your fleet older in the long run, you know, but We see that all the time. And, you know, I keep thinking, man, these guys—

It's always so ironic because they'll use that as like a bragging point. Like, nope, you're missing the boat.

Yeah.

So, so definitely understand fleet benchmarks, understand how you're doing against the benchmark. I will tell you one piece of advice I always give people is just apply, do as best you can with the questions, answer them all, but then you get your rating. And then talk to the judges afterwards. A lot of people don't realize that you can go talk to the judges either at any IME or you can set up time afterwards and you guys are more than happy to talk through their application and say, oh, well, this is why we ranked you down here where we marked you down here. And if you don't know what the benchmarks are, that's a great time to say, well, I have a 70% PM compliance ratio. What would you guys like to see there? What should I be driving on next year when I apply? And it's like a little free consulting gig that you guys get out of this.

Oh yeah, that's the best thing you can do is I would always tell people, apply. No matter what, just apply. Even if you don't think you're gonna be in the top 100, just apply because it becomes a learning experience for you. And then you start asking the questions like Josh has said, and then we start giving you some of the answers and some of the tips, and then that will improve your operation the next year. So just keep applying and keep applying. And like anything else, your application will be a continuous improvement project.

I'd actually be curious because I know there's several fleets who have applied for years and decades, right? You know, it's almost as long as Tom's been doing it. I'd be curious to go back in time and look at some of their early applications and then compare it to their recent applications. Now, obviously you have things like fleet manager change and things of that nature, but I'd be curious if you've had the same consistent fleet manager year over year, just how that's drifted over time and how well they've done at improving their own process. I can imagine talking to people is every year it gets a little tighter, it gets a little easier, it gets a little simpler, and they can tell it better.

That's the other tip I'd tell you too, is once you win or you place, don't rest on your laurels.

Nope.

Because we see a lot of people that, you know, they finally hit that pinnacle and then they don't do near as many things or projects, or they think, I've done it, I've arrived, right? And they get done, slowly slide downhill. That's what happens.

Well, and then they wonder, why am I not doing well? Like, I'm a 100 Best Fleet winner. It's like, well, you were, And again, the curve shifts. You get, you know, better, brighter fleets that come in.

It's like the BHAG we talk about. Yeah, you got to keep setting the BHAG. You got to set that bar high, continually move it.

One of my favorite things, though, is when you walk into a shop and you see 7 or 8 banners, consecutive years across the top, right? Which just shows that they've been consistent, that they keep applying. And whether or not the numbers improve every year, it doesn't matter as much to me. It's kind of cool to see that. But it does show me as like they really care about it and they're putting in the time and energy every single year versus just seeing one banner. It's like, good job, you did it once.

The other thing I say too is get your entire team involved in it. Yeah, this is not a fleet manager award. This is a team award and they need to participate and understand what you're doing and how their contribution is to the culture and the organization. And there's several culture questions. You know, that's part of this application, which if you— as you listen to RTA, you know, we're big on culture. And so think about, I just had a, actually a webinar earlier this morning where that was the question that was asked. And I've always believed as a fleet manager, that's the one thing you control is your culture. People, "Oh no, I got a union, I got that." No, you can control your culture. It's just you have to tiptoe around some things sometimes. But you can't control above you. Typically, but you can control below you. So I think that's when I first met you, that's what really intrigued me to come to RTA is because of the culture and how you can control that. So make sure you answer those questions in the application honestly, delicately, and we're talking about rewards, recognition, celebration, collaboration, things like that that are just normal in a workplace that need to happen. So get your team involved in that.

Yeah. Well, and then get them involved too, because they're the ones that when you do win, you want to share that award with them because you're going to share it with, you know, city council. You're going to share it with your higher-ups, with the VPs, you know, whoever's in charge of that maintenance in your division. And, you know, make sure you brag them up and help them feel like, hey, we did something, you know. All right. So one of the big things that's been on my mind with NAFA Hunter Best is the shift towards obviously ChatGPT changed the world when it launched a few years ago. I'm curious how you've seen that impact the 100 Best applications.

I've seen everything from one that I suspected they might have rewritten a few sentences to the whole application was done in AI.

That's funny.

Okay. So it is becoming an issue. We're starting to feel like we need to get some teacher training to spot the AI now. I would say, you know, you're like looking for em dashes. Yeah.

And like, you know, semicolons. Yeah.

What I would say though is, like I've learned with it, with ChatGPT, you have to know your craft.

Yes.

Because AI will basically lie. That's just a fact.

It's sycophancy.

Yeah.

Like there's a word for this, by the way.

Exactly. And so if you're going to use it, you better know how to be a fleet manager. Because it will say things in your application that you may not even know about. And so, so that's really my biggest thing is make sure if you're going to do any research, make sure you get citations and URLs and things like that. I've actually had them made up, make up fleet stuff. And thankfully for me, I've been in almost 5 decades in fleet, so I usually can spot the BS, you know, wherever I see it. But if you're a brand new fleet manager, you may not be able to spot the BS. And then now you're giving an application to 4 other people like me that have been in fleet. So we're going to call it out. Yeah.

So I think one of my favorites is when I see the words like, certainly, you know, when you see the first word in the paragraph is certainly. Here's some examples, right? It's literally just the prompt response in ChatGPT. Whenever you prompt it, it'll, oh yeah, here, here's a thing. And it'll just spit it out. And every time I see that, I'm like, oh, you used ChatGPT for this and then you didn't do the due diligence to clean it up and make it your own.

Yeah, you need— and yeah, you definitely do proofread it.

Yeah.

You know, I think there's nothing wrong with using AI to get you started, maybe put a little structure behind things, but do not take that as absolute. That's like we write reports all the time. We don't— we use it as a starter, but we don't use it as an absolute.

Yeah, it definitely makes the application process easier, but don't use it as a full-on crutch.

I actually did a couple judging using AI last year. I think it might be a future for this.

Okay.

I put in the criteria and I said, you know, here's where I want you to score between here and there using this. We have like the rubric and it can actually do it, but in my opinion, it scored too high.

So it's a little generous, a little too generous.

So I think at some point down the road, I think It will take a lot of the subjectivity out. Yeah. You know, if we were able to figure out the right algorithm to do that.

I gotta imagine that's probably just like some really good prompt engineering would get us close to that.

It would. And I think it's possible. I think none of us at this point have that background enough to do the prompt.

Well, and so if you are gonna use ChatGPT or Claude or anything like that, there are settings that you can go into to kind of turn down the sycophancy, right? Turn down the hallucination that just wants to say it's a yes man. Right? ChatGPT is a total yes man, if you didn't know this.

Oh yeah.

And so you have to tell it like—

So is Grok though.

Yes, very much. I'll tell you whatever you want to hear. I want to be your best friend, right? It's like a little puppy dog. But you have to tell it, it's like, no, I want you to challenge all of my assumptions and I want you to, you know, really prove out, like I want this idea or whatever we come up with to be bulletproof. And it'll flip the gears on you.

It will.

And all of a sudden you'll be like, whoa, all right, ChatGPT is a little mean, you know?

I've got to the point where it knows Steve Salske for now on ChatGPT. GPT. Yeah, it even quotes Steve back to Steve.

Oh yeah, it's totally crazy.

Yeah. And I, and I, and I tell it flat out, do not give me any BS on this thing. Yeah. And, uh, it doesn't anymore. It learns me.

Yeah, that's scary in itself. It knows you're going to call it on its stuff, right? And I've definitely done that a few times, like, this is not adequate, like, I expect better from you and all this. I was scolding it like a little child.

I do. I treat it, I treat it like an intern or a young child.

I treat it But yeah, so if you're going to use ChatGPT, just, you know, make sure you're turning down the yes man and you're turning up the scrutiny and turning up the challenge so that it's really writing something. You can even try to do that, right? I don't know if the Steve Salzgiver model is public. Oh, that would actually be something we could do. It's pretty easy. Like we could build a GPT for NAFA. 100%. At our best. Put this in the idea bank. In the style of Steve, Scott, Danny and Michael.

Yeah, yeah, 3 men.

And you do go through that process and be like, all right, we're gonna, we're gonna build a GPT-4 U4 and then we'll submit our applications through that. It's just like, hey, we'll help you build this and then you can submit the real thing, right?

But you're gonna have to, uh, you'd have to really dial down the score because Scott Rood's a hardass.

You know what, and they might know that, they might figure that out. It would probably figure that out by now. Yeah.

It's pretty funny.

All right, well, any other last tidbits or last bits of advice for listeners as they're thinking about applying for NAFHA 100 Best?

Not really, but just make sure you apply. I mean, really, that's the key. I was talking in a podcast this morning, what can you do consistency-wise? And I always remember this quote by Arnold Schwarzenegger, just get to the gym. Just get to the gym. And there's days where I am sick as a dog, but I get to the gym. You know, and once you get there, then you might lift 2 pounds and then you might walk, you know, 15 feet. And that's the whole thing is just get there. So get your application filled out and get it finished and move on.

You know, wise words. Get to the gym.

Yeah. All right.

Well, that's going to wrap it up for us on this week's episode of the Fleet Success Show. Steve, always, always a pleasure having you in the studio.

I love being on this podcast. Yeah. Thank you. All right.

Well, till next time. Thanks, guys.

Take care.

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