Worldwide best practice on fleet vehicles

LSA report on Vision for the future of freight fleet January 2020 conference.

Conference hosted by the City of London Corporation.

LSA chairman Carl Lomas was in the City of London for the fifth annual Future Fleet conference hosted at the Guildhall by the City of London Corporation.

A trade show of stands inside and vehicle showcase outside including the latest large van Renault.

World vehicle fleet themes with North American and Canadian speakers alongside Dundee Scotland talking big electric taxi fleets.

The lecture seminar exchanged best practice from global cities with operators from across the UK and all over the world.

Driver training and driver education, FORS, Vision Zero, CLOCS and Direct Vision all in the keynotes.

Speakers on Future Fleet best practice, road safety, driver training, vehicle tracking, telematics, alternative fuel vehicles.

Operators large and small, the City of London Future Fleet is become a must-do annual diary for logistics. It will be in the LSA diary date list for 2021.

David Braunstein. ‘New Yorker’ - A global fleet safety standard.

Together for Safer Roads Alliance.

We are a global initiative for road safety. We have a safe city programme and a safe fleet programme. Institutions in final mile engaged include UPS.

We want you to look outside the four walls, share knowledge and reduce road crash. New York is one of our focus cities to share knowledge on fleet safety. We have identified the vast number of vehicles are run by small operators. Less than twenty vehicles?, really hard to tell how they are doing.

High vision trucks, side safety guards, real-time vehicle tracking and better driver training are the cultures we want to inform and report. It's not just compliance, it's about being fair.

David compared Houston to New York, a spread-out city in comparison to the high urban density of New York.

Keith Kerman , Deputy Commissioner, Chief Fleet Officer , City of New York

 New York City safer roads, vision zero and cycling Green Wave.

Keith Kerman appealed for no hands free, just drive the vehicle. ‘Hands and mind on the wheel’

Vehicles should be designed like virtual bumper cars that cannot crash. We want safety separated from trim in the extras package.

New York City, ‘Vision Zero’ Murders are down, today there are almost as many traffic deaths as violent crime, our city needs to be safe and Vision Zero is about our dept of transportation. Street design has been key, fleet is as important, the vehicle design can save lines and vehicles switch out quickly. Trucks in North America do not have side guards, we are putting them on to save lives.

We have thirty thousand vehicles in the City fleet and there are ten thousand buses. Twenty thousand of our vehicles are real time tracked from our NYC fleet command centre. Tracking live. We get instant crash reports from g-force impacts on the vehicle. With MIT we are tracking environment from tester equipment on the top of vehicles.

Keith spoke passionately about the recent death of a ten year old; an incident on a ramp where the truck had no vision.

Rory McMullan , City of London Corporation safe roads.

Road Danger Reduction and Behaviour Change Manager.

Less than one per-cent of vehicles are heavy but heavy accounts for thirty per-cent of accidents. For safer streets we have restricted access at Bank Junction, We have brought twenty mile per hour zones and are looking at fifteen miles per hour. We have a high number of motorcyclists, gig economy powered two wheeler deliveries are becoming a safety challenge. FORS CLOCS and Direct Vision all on the UK road safety agendas reducing accidents.

Alina Tuerk , Strategy and Planning Manager

Transport for London Vision Zero and Direct Vision standard.

Road safety is paramount to us. We have a Vision Zero Plan. Direct Vision standard is with us. FORS and CLOCS standards are delivering safer roads. FORS more than a decade old. There is no one answer but this best practice is very important.

Roger Atkins , MD , Electric Vehicle Outlook

How do we match eco with economic?

Remember Modec electric vans, where did the decade go?

A decade ago who would have believed Shell and BP would have the largest real estate for charging points? Does any one remember Modec in Coventry? It seems like we have lost more than a decade ago. Thirteen years ago in the UK, Fedex, UPS and Tesco were running electric final mile Modecs. A vehicle designed around the battery, what happened to it? There was a financial crisis and back then a lack of emphasis on clean air outlook. How do we match eco with economic? Urban operating fleets are ripe and ready today for electrification right now - Just as they were 10 years ago.

Clean air is the challenge today. Charging solutions are available, including battery swaps and wireless charging. Tesla have been a great poster for EV, but the focus has only been cars. Commercial fleets cause the most emission and that’s where we need the focus. I believe for those who do not commit to an EV step there will be large financial impact in the near future. Whole life cost of EV is fundamental to the economic solution. Drivers don’t like change, talk to drivers first and engage them in the fleet purchase of next generation alternative fuel vehicles before you buy them.

Battery swap, automated station to swap the battery, you lease the battery, you don’t own it, much easier than a fast charge. There are some big companies today investing in battery swap. Wireless charge, getting electrons over a twenty cm gap, technology has been around as long as a hundred years. Over time efficiency has been achieved.

Fraser Crichton , Corporate Fleet Operations Manager , Dundee City Council

Dundee – ‘an electric City’

Fraser Crichton talked about an eight year journey.

Dundee’s 8-year journey to e-mobility transition. Dundee implemented its EV-charging infrastructure strategy including other renewable energy solutions en-route to a clean air Scottish city.

Fraser talked how Dundee City Council came to have the largest percentage of electric taxis in UK

Sharon Fleming , Director of Fleet Services , Multi-purpose truck

City of Calgary - innovation, efficiencies and tax savings

Calgary is a cowboy town that has exploded to be the third largest city in Canada, economy linked to oil industry. With change of oil value, we have moved from a time of plenty to a time to find efficiencies. We are working on alternatively fuelled vehicles, seasonal climate here has a big range, as an oil city we don’t have the interest you may expect, we are working on CNG for a trial this year.

The City of Calgary is maximising value and avoiding unnecessary costs in fleet management. We are making strategic design choices to create a multi-purpose fleet, we have separate fleet themes, fire and police, freight and parks. Changing season weather impacts on the type of vehicles, mowers in summer, snow ploughs in winter.

We are working to a standardised truck for multipurpose use. Road maintenance, anti-icing, dust suppression is all seasonal, we decided to build a standard base truck ourselves, switching components within twenty minutes. It has been so successful we have patented the design. We are licensing the design to two different manufacturers in North America.

Flex fleet is our Calgary car share project, Seasonal leasing, peaks for vehicles, we have tracked need for variations of vehicles across seasons, then put in for leases only for the months we need them. Specifying all vehicles to be undertow years old.

Steve Rapanos , City Operations/Manager

City of Edmonton Canada. Customer journey mapping.

Calgary has fifty festivals a year with eighteen thousand acres of park space. Oil-driven and lots of infrastructure build. Over five thousand vehicles on our City fleet, we are looking at our customers using Customer Journey Mapping. ‘Who is our customer and what are they really saying? Vehicle operators to maintenance and vehicle management. Customer journey mapping gave us the potential to affect employee retention, productivity and customer loyalty, it is also a key link to customer satisfaction, organisational reputation and overall stakeholder value.

We Identify the customer’s journey in a logical order showing the gaps between the desired customer experience and the one actually received. From parts in the shop to vehicle on the road.

Key findings was while 655 were satisfied there was lots of room to improve. We found people wanted better analytics and more detailed invoicing.

A full house trade show at the Guildhall City of London for future Fleet – telematics to wheel nuts.