Fleet Management: Technology and Policies for Company Vehicles
This week, Jake Voll sits down with Robert Few of The Connection Xchange and Greg Sariti of In Charge Electric to talk about company vehicles, the part of your business that is the most visible, the most expensive, and the easiest to ignore until it bites you.
Robert runs TCX, a consulting and coaching company that works with integrators, electrical contractors, and distributors on building a foundation and getting to scale. Greg is the home technology director at In Charge Electric, which runs over 380 trucks across four Texas metroplexes and ten branches. He has lived the whole curve, from three or four trucks of his own in the early 2000s to a fleet with a full-time manager.
In this episode, we talk about...
✅ What GPS and telematics are really solving for, and why that conversation is easier today than it was ten years ago
✅ What the systems track beyond location, including AI that flags eyes off the road, plus the insurance discounts and the carriers that now require cameras
✅ Why the rolling billboard cuts both ways, because anyone with a phone can put your truck on Facebook
✅ Writing the fleet use policy before you need it: take-home rules, the geofencing questions nobody documents, and who eats the deductible when a distracted tech causes the accident
✅ On-call policy for techs with trucks at home, including zero tolerance on alcohol from both guests
✅ Fuel cards in practice at In Charge, from driver numbers and mileage at every fill-up to why Robert says fuel only and means it
✅ Maintenance that actually happens: shops next to every branch, monthly manager walkarounds, and Greg's 30-day truck party
✅ Buy versus lease, the repair-or-replace math that sneaks up on you, and two ways dealers turn an old truck into a retention perk
✅ Coaching, write-ups, and when a bad driver has to go, plus the scorecard that makes that call defensible instead of personal
Coffee Break With Jake is recorded live every Friday at 11am ET. Join us live or register to attend at https://go.ssandsi.com/coffeebreak
Robert runs TCX, a consulting and coaching company that works with integrators, electrical contractors, and distributors on building a foundation and getting to scale. Greg is the home technology director at In Charge Electric, which runs over 380 trucks across four Texas metroplexes and ten branches. He has lived the whole curve, from three or four trucks of his own in the early 2000s to a fleet with a full-time manager.
In this episode, we talk about...
✅ What GPS and telematics are really solving for, and why that conversation is easier today than it was ten years ago
✅ What the systems track beyond location, including AI that flags eyes off the road, plus the insurance discounts and the carriers that now require cameras
✅ Why the rolling billboard cuts both ways, because anyone with a phone can put your truck on Facebook
✅ Writing the fleet use policy before you need it: take-home rules, the geofencing questions nobody documents, and who eats the deductible when a distracted tech causes the accident
✅ On-call policy for techs with trucks at home, including zero tolerance on alcohol from both guests
✅ Fuel cards in practice at In Charge, from driver numbers and mileage at every fill-up to why Robert says fuel only and means it
✅ Maintenance that actually happens: shops next to every branch, monthly manager walkarounds, and Greg's 30-day truck party
✅ Buy versus lease, the repair-or-replace math that sneaks up on you, and two ways dealers turn an old truck into a retention perk
✅ Coaching, write-ups, and when a bad driver has to go, plus the scorecard that makes that call defensible instead of personal
Coffee Break With Jake is recorded live every Friday at 11am ET. Join us live or register to attend at https://go.ssandsi.com/coffeebreak
