Episode 218: Fleet Predictions 2026: AI Hype, Technician Shortages, & the Next Era of Fleet Managers

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. All right, welcome back for another episode of the Fleet Success Show with your hosts, Josh Turley, Mark Canton.

How you doing, Josh?

I'm doing awesome. Yeah, so today we wanna do a fun little episode on 2026 predictions. We're like a month late, so, you know, Maybe this is cheating a little bit. You know, last year we did 2025.

We did pretty well.

I think we did pretty well. Yeah. One of the biggest ones I remember from last year was I was really predicting some breakthroughs and advancements in nuclear fusion. And like every year, I was disappointed that nothing really happened.

Right.

They did make some advancements, but just nothing earth-shattering. It's still coming, I guess. Right. It's the promise of fusion. It's just never there and always coming. Yeah. But I want to talk about like 2026 as we look forward to this year. What are some things, maybe some trends in fleet some things we think are going to happen, kind of where do we see things moving. But if we were to put our name in the sand and say, yeah, I think that's going to happen this year, what do you think in 2026? What's something that you would—

Well, I'm going to ping pong it to you. First off, I'm going to say awesome to be back in studio with you. I feel like it's been—

It has been a little while.

It's been too long.

Yep. We were talking about that today is like, you know, we'll bring on other guests and you can kind of just tell, you know, it's sometimes it's a little bit tough to— like the chemistry is just not there, right? But you and I, like, we just, you know, It's an easy volley.

Sure. Well, one of the things we said last year, I remember going back to the previous October saying at a conference that, you know, today very few folks in fleet particular were talking about AI, right? And guaranteed, fast forward a year, that's all anybody would be talking about. That one hit a grand slam. I know you agreed with it. Totally, totally hit on that. And then you were sharing some thoughts before we started recording.

Yeah.

I kind of wanna volley back to you there.

Yeah, so what was interesting is, you know, I remember we gave two presentations on AI this year, once at a NAFSA Southwest Regional here and then over one over at FleetCon. And, you know, both of those very well attended and, you know, a lot of fleets were starting to adopt it already.

Right.

But definitely some talk around obstacles to adoption, especially in the public sector. A lot of municipalities putting in regulations, statutes about, hey, don't do this. Especially because of FOIA and things like that. And the training data that these things use, they just— they're going through their adoption curve, right? It'll get to a point that'll be totally adopted. But right now they're kind of in that wait and see mode and you can use it but only for certain things. And you're seeing some cities that are very much on the forefront of this and others that are just very much—

Nein, make it work.

Don't do it. Yeah, right. You know, so it's interesting to see that happen. Looking into 2026, though, as we're kind of coming into this, I remember in 2025, all the hype was around AI and just how it was going to put a lot of people out of business. It was gonna make it way easier to write software. As a software company, we're very much aware of that kind of thing. And you know, how easy is it for entrants into the market? Can they do what we do? That kind of thing. And largely I would say that that hype has been overblown, right? And then the big talk shifted towards the end of the year as the AI bubble.

Right.

Right, is that companies are overvaluing what AI can do, right? In technology, we always refer back to the big technology bubble, which if you remember right, back in 1999, this is dot-com.

Right.

Right, when the dot-com bubble burst, it was a huge thing. People lost massive fortunes. It was a huge deal. And people are kind of looking at that same thing saying, "There's no way, there's no earnings, there's no revenue. Like the AI bubble is going to burst." And there's reasons why that's true and why it's not.

Right.

How it relates to fleet, we'll talk about that in a second. I think back to the dot-com bubble and yes, those companies were totally overvalued. You had a lot of e-com businesses that didn't know how to do e-com or they were not really selling anything. They were just being like directories.

Yeah.

And so it made sense that that burst, but the underlying technology didn't go away.

Right.

Right. There's still everything uses dot-com. I mean, Amazon survived out of that.

Yeah.

You had definitely the internet changed the world, Even if there was a hype bubble, the world changed.

Yeah.

Right. So I think that same thing is going to be true here. I don't believe the bubble is as bad as we say it is because they do have legitimate business models. You actually heard Jerome Powell talk about that, right? Is that it's not the same as it was in the dot-coms. However, there's a lot of overvaluation. They haven't figured out how to monetize it yet. They're still overspending. There's going to be a day of reckoning there where it's just not profitable enough and people are going to stop investing in them and giving them free cash.

Right.

At some point those models will break or they'll come to roost. And I think you will see a consolidation because right now there's a slide that I presented in, you know, November, October when I was giving these presentations, just the sheer number of AI players out there right now.

Yeah, it's massive.

So you as a consumer are coming in here trying to figure out like, well, what do I use for this? And even right now, if I were to tell you like, hey, what are the, you know, 3 or 4 different AI models that you can go out there and use? To just write a paragraph, right? Well, ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, right? Claude are probably the biggest 4, right? But there's another 20 behind that, right? I think you're going to start seeing some— a lot of consolidation behind those big winners, right? Like, and those who are probably the most stable and most invested in, they've got the biggest names behind them. So what's my prediction for 2026 is that the, the bubble will pop, but it's going to be a quiet pop and you'll see some consolidation around some of those big— right, like the little guys will start dying off.

Sure.

And you'll see some consolidation around who the— like the big players.

Right.

What does that mean for Fleet? The hype bubble is actually what's going to pop. That is the thing. Like the hype bubble will pop.

Yes.

But the actual technology, just like the internet changed the world, the e-com changed the world. AI is going to continue changing the world and you're going to see it become more and more prevalent in the tools and everything that you're using day to day.

Right.

I know that's true for us.

Yes.

I know who was in attendance at my sessions. I'm pretty sure that it's going to be true for others. If they're smart, they'll be doing this. You know, if not, they might just be, hey, this— they don't believe in the hype yet. They'll be late to the party. It's fine.

Right.

Fleet, we're slow to adopt technology anyway, so it's— that'll be fine. That's true. I do see the hype bubble popping, but it doesn't mean that AI itself won't continue to drive adoption and be adopted by fleets and really by cities and by all these other organizations as well.

Right.

As they look for those hidden efficiencies.

Yeah.

Okay. This is the other, like, maybe 1A prediction. 1B prediction is that we're not going to find as much efficiency through AI as we think we will.

Right.

So it's going to be a little bit of trial by error. We will get better at it. But the initial promise is going to still be a little bit elusive into how fast does it make us, how much more productive does it make us? And because of that, the, the AI apocalypse is what I'll call it, where it's going to put everybody out of jobs and we're going to have mass unemployment. It's coming, but not tomorrow. Not for a while. Right, right. Not for a while.

Yeah.

And who knows? By then, you know, if the robotics catch up, that is a totally different world.

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So two quick pieces on this. One is you just read my mind, right? Which is like— and notice there's a trend here, right? The same way EVs were not going to save the world and eliminate carbon footprints, even though we like EVs, right? We just want to be kind of honest about how this is going to work. You know, in the dot-com era, every company who had nothing to do with internet in their core businesses were trying to grab a piece of that and they really didn't have expertise. They didn't have the sort of the plan in place and the foundation in place to actually be able to leverage it or at least leverage it quickly. The same is going to be true for AI folks, right? You know, and so, you know, I want you to talk on that a little bit about be careful. And when you talk about the hype, right, like every company out there is going to tell you they're using AI for something, even if it's not really AI, you know.

You need to make sure you understand, like your vendors, if they're going to say that I am AI enabled, You need to understand what models they're using.

What does that mean?

What companies, what dependencies are they building into their product? What dependencies are they building on as a company? Because if they pick the wrong one, they put their bet on the wrong one and that one goes under, it's going to be like the charging station issues, right? You remember all that when EV was all the rage and all the mandates were still in effect, you had all these charging companies that were popping up out of the woodwork.

Yeah.

And then within a few years they died off.

Right.

And I always— this is my analogy all the time when we have this is that you put rain in the desert and what pops up? Lots of green, lots of weeds. And then as soon as the rain goes away, everything dries and wilts under the harsh reality of, you know, the sun.

Right.

And in this case, we're putting a lot of rain money into, you know, then it was EVs and charging. And then when it dried up, or at least it stabilized, these companies that didn't have enough root couldn't sustain themselves and they dried up and withered away. Right. So it's an economic reality. They died under the harsh economic reality of the sun. The same thing will be true with AI. You need to make sure that you're vetting these companies what models they're using, how they're, you know, basically monetizing it. Is it sustainable? What happens if all of a sudden their AI costs go through the roof? Is that coming to you? Are you ready for that? Can you predict it? If you get dependent on something, make sure that you have alternatives.

Right. So, and you'll see a lot of the same patterns in sort of the consumer element of it, right? Like the folks who want to lead the charge. And again, the good analogy to me with the EVs, right? I'm going to buy every EV ever created and they're left being the guinea pigs of, well, how am I going to service this thing? And sort of figure that out. And then you'll have the other extreme of, well, I'm never gonna touch an EV, and they'll be slow to adopt and they'll hurt themselves as well. You're seeing some of that similar, right? Where like you mentioned at the top, we have customers and prospects we've dealt with where it's like, oh, is there AI in the software? Oh, we can't talk. You know, it's like, really? You know? And then you have the reverse where if there's not AI in every little piece and every little feature, it's like, well, is the cost of building that actually generating value for you? Right? You know?

And you guys aren't forward enough looking for us, right? Yeah. Yeah. The idea is to be moderate, be balanced.

Yeah.

You know, avoid the hype train, but at the same time, just know that it's not all hype.

It's real.

It's not going away.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's changed the world and it's not unchanging.

Yeah. Yeah.

Other predictions?

Well, I know another one we'll agree on is, you know, the technician shortage isn't going away in 2026.

So sad. I'm so sad about this. I think it'll get a little bit better.

I'm hopeful.

Temporarily.

Yeah.

Right. Like we've talked about this before. Gen Z is the tool belt generation. They're kind of, you know, The economics are demanding this. Unfortunately, especially in public sector, wages aren't gonna keep up. They're not gonna be what they should be. And so it won't draw enough. The economics alone aren't gonna draw enough of Gen Z into it. It should. We could fix this problem overnight if we wanted to, but it just takes money. And we won't do it. So we're gonna be stuck with this for a little while.

We're seeing improvement, but it's just, it's not, the pace is just nowhere near enough.

Well, and they're going to the other trades, right? Like that's the thing we're noticing. We talked about that, right? It's more lucrative to fire up and become your own plumber or become an electrician. And it's way more difficult to be your own technician.

Yeah. And then even within the technician, you know, folks are not equipped or ready to battle with Ford for when they got 6,000 technician openings.

Deep pockets.

How are you going to fight that? Right. And there are ways, but it takes money. It takes money.

But we're not willing to look at, you know, and that's the thing that just drives me crazy with our public sector HR.

Yeah.

You know, it's like we're not looking at all the substitutes and who we're actually competing against. We're only doing this circle thing where we're looking at each other.

Yeah.

And well, what are you paying? What are you paying? Okay, well then that's what I'm going to pay instead of looking at the true market. Yeah, it's the most like head in the sand, obnoxious thing I ever run into. It's self-sustainment instead of, you know, pat ourselves on the back, make ourselves feel good about each other.

Right.

And it's just, it's completely backwards. That'll continue.

Sorry, sorry.

2026 is not going to make that better till I get in front of some HR people. If there is an HR government conference, I'm going to look this up. I'm going to go find one. I'm sure that if you know, if you know of them, right, your HR person happens to like podcasts, shoot this over to them by all means. I'm sure there's another one that Facundo and I talk about this, or you and I talk about it, but, uh, by all means, yeah, introduce me. I'd love to get in front of those guys. Um, they would never invite me back, but for one day I might be able to make a difference. Uh, all right, last prediction. Um, All right. This is way out there. This is my, like, I'm going to put some positive vibes into the fleet industry.

Let's do it.

This is like the most unlikely to happen. So I'm sorry. We'll knock on some wood. But 2026, I'm putting the vibe out there that we're not going to have any major supply chain disruptions. All right. Tariffs are going to have stabilized. Yeah. You know, like the supply chain between China, the US, and Mexico and all that stuff, it's going to normalize.

It's going to iron out a little.

We're just— it's not going to be great, right? But it's going to be stable.

Stable.

So that's my big prediction. Now, obviously, if, if we invade Greenland, then it's all off the table.

Sorry, World War III.

Right. And, you know, like we keep going back and forth on, hey, we should— we're going to tariff in order to buy Greenland. I don't know what the hell— whatever. I get it. However, if that happens, it's off the table. Supply chain is just toast. Sorry. But my good vibes are is that things will be stable in the, you know, the world economy and the world supply chain. And we won't have any massive disruptions.

Okay.

And so therefore our replacement schedules should be able to get back on track. And yeah, just overall one less headache for fleet managers to deal with.

All right.

That's my positive thinking. If I had a wish for the universe, that would be what it is.

All right. I'm going to give you one.

Yeah.

And we're already seeing it. I had Janelle on here and we're seeing some trends and we've talked a lot about how kind of The fleet manager of today is, is changing, right? The pressure from leadership to leverage data. And so we're seeing alternate paths. No more— there's still plenty of folks and we still need them, you know, mechanics on up, but people coming over from adjacent, you know, and all that stuff. You look at the math on the boomers, there's just not much time left for them. I think we're going to kind of see that full transition to— this is the year, this is the year, right? Like it's the fleet manager is no longer that technician-driven, and it's, it's this new sort of management, you know, prof— you know, professional, uh, decision-maker, data-driven decision-maker. I think this is gonna be the year where we're gonna feel this, that they're the majority now, right? And I don't know how I'm gonna prove it, but I gotta think about that.

All right.

But I think that's what we're gonna feel.

All right.

Yeah.

That it's the, the year of the transition, right? From the, as the boomers retire and the brain drain happens, the, it's backfilled by by more manager analysts instead of our normal technician to fleet manager route.

Yep. Interesting.

All right. Well, with that, that's going to do it for this week's episode. If you have predictions, I'd love to hear them as well. Just email us podcast@rtafleet.com. Otherwise, until next time.

Take care, everybody.

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