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When a business changes, the fleet cannot stop moving. Acquisitions, divestitures, vendor changes, reimbursement programs, driver expectations, and mobility decisions all create pressure on fleet leaders. The challenge is keeping drivers productive while the business changes around them. That requires clear communication, clean data, strong vendor relationships, and a fleet program flexible enough to adapt without creating unnecessary disruption.
Business must keep moving: The first rule of any fleet integration is business as usual on day one. Drivers need clear communication about what is changing, what is staying the same, and what they should expect.
Clean data reduces risk: Acquisitions and divestitures move quickly, often with limited notice. Clean driver, vehicle, inventory, lease, and program data helps fleet teams respond faster when timelines are compressed.
Vendor loyalty has limits: Staying too long with the wrong fleet management company can create complacency, outdated processes, weaker pricing, and slower innovation. The cost of not changing can be as high as the cost of switching.
Choosing a fleet management company: The right fleet partner should offer more than competitive pricing. In times of change, you need strong technology and strategic guidance to help reduce manual work and improve accountability.
Business must keep moving: The first rule of any fleet integration is business as usual on day one. Drivers need clear communication about what is changing, what is staying the same, and what they should expect.
Clean data reduces risk: Acquisitions and divestitures move quickly, often with limited notice. Clean driver, vehicle, inventory, lease, and program data helps fleet teams respond faster when timelines are compressed.
Vendor loyalty has limits: Staying too long with the wrong fleet management company can create complacency, outdated processes, weaker pricing, and slower innovation. The cost of not changing can be as high as the cost of switching.
Choosing a fleet management company: The right fleet partner should offer more than competitive pricing. In times of change, you need strong technology and strategic guidance to help reduce manual work and improve accountability.
If there’s one thing fleet leaders understand, it’s that change rarely arrives neatly.
A company acquires a new business. A vendor no longer fits. A driver population needs a different mobility option. Data is incomplete. Leaders want answers quickly, and drivers need support to do their jobs.
Jennifer VrMeer, Senior Manager of Sales Operations at BD, has managed a fleet through all of it inside a large healthcare organization. In the latest episode of The Fleet, she joined host Chris Brandt to talk about what it takes to keep a fleet productive while the business changes around it. Her perspective is practical because it comes from experience: fleet transitions work best when drivers stay informed, data is clean, and leaders prepare before the pressure hits.
The first rule of any integration is simple: business as usual on day one. Drivers should know what is changing, what is staying the same, and where to go for help.
“Don’t break the business. Don’t make the drivers freak out,” Jennifer said.
That is the job of communication during a fleet transition. If drivers are unclear, the questions, emails, and noise start quickly. When planning a transition, the message does not need to be complicated. You just need to address:
What happens on day one?
What do drivers need to do?
Who can help?
Leadership should be part of communicating that message too. Emails matter, but they’re easy to miss. When managers understand what is happening, they can reinforce the message and help drivers feel more confident.
Fleet integrations are rarely just about vehicles. A business may come in with different policies, reimbursement models, vendors, and expectations. That means fleet teams need to look beyond who gets which vehicle and understand what happens with each driver.
Sometimes the biggest dependencies sit outside the fleet team. Payroll timelines can affect reimbursement, vendor readiness can affect support, business decisions can change the go-live date. Silence through all this creates uncertainty. That’s why communication matters, even when nothing changes on day one. Drivers need to know what to expect, what to do, and where to get help.
When looking at partners for a fleet program, three things matter most: technology, pricing, and strategic partnership. Technology matters because modern fleets need visibility, integration, and speed. A partner with weak systems can create extra manual work across the program. If teams are constantly pulling reports into Excel, the program becomes harder to manage as the business grows. At the same time, the most advanced technology is not always the best fit. A partner’s tech stack still has to match what the company can support.
“If we have a vendor that doesn’t have very robust technology or roadmap, it’s going to make things more challenging,” Jennifer said.
Pricing also needs a closer look. The proposal is only part of the picture. Understanding the full pricing structure helps fleet leaders compare partners fairly. The third factor is whether the partner is strategic. A good partner understands your business and brings ideas to the table to move your fleet forward.
As fleets grow, working with multiple vendors can create confusion. Multiple vendors often mean multiple systems, invoices, reports, and processes, which creates more administrative work for fleet leaders. Accountability can also become harder when several vendors touch the same process. If something goes wrong, it can be difficult to know who owns the problem. One vendor points to another, the issue slows down, and you’re left to untangle it.
Reducing the number of vendors can help where it makes sense. The goal is to cut overhead, protect margins, and make the program easier to manage. Changing a fleet management company is not easy, which is why companies may end up staying longer than they should. Jennifer described this as a loyalty penalty, not the loyalty bonus companies might expect. Changing a fleet partner can be costly, but staying with the wrong one can cost just as much.
A fleet RFP, or request for proposal, helps companies understand what each fleet partner can offer before choosing one. But it should do more than collect pricing. The real value is in asking the right questions, so you can compare apples to apples. If the questions are too vague, one partner may answer one way, and another may answer differently. Then you’re not really comparing the same thing. Pricing needs the same care because the price from a fleet management company may not show every layer of cost, especially when other providers are involved.
Service-level agreements, or SLAs, are another place to look closely. Many partners have a standard template, but Jennifer said those templates can be too generic. They may not measure what matters most to your fleet program. Client references can tell you a lot too.
Instead of only talking to long-term happy clients, Jennifer likes to speak with clients who recently joined or recently left. Those conversations show what the transition was really like, how the partner treats outgoing clients and what comes out when the relationship is under pressure.
A divestiture happens when a company sells or separates part of its business. Fleet leaders talk a lot about integrations, but as Jennifer said, you rarely hear people talking about the divestiture experience. Divestitures often come with fewer people to help because teams tend to focus more on integrations, and there may not be much lead time to prepare.
The buyer’s decision shapes much of the work. Even transitions that sound simple can get complicated quickly. As Jennifer explained, keeping the same FMC can still require lease transfers, retitling, and reregistration. Clean driver and inventory data are critical because messy data can slow the process before it even begins.
Strong driver satisfaction doesn’t come from saying yes to everything. As Jennifer explained, fleet leaders must balance what is right for the company with cost, driver experience and productivity. Drivers should feel they are heard, but the fleet still has to support corporate priorities. When feedback is feasible, act on it. When it’s not, explain the why. If people keep asking for something and the answer is ignored, it becomes a distraction.
Surveys help when they get to the heart of the challenge. Jennifer said standard surveys can give an overview, but they may not get to the level of detail fleet leaders need. That is why her team customizes driver surveys around the questions that matter at the time. For electrification, that meant asking how much drivers knew about hybrid, plug-in hybrid and EVs, what concerns they had, and what hurdles the team would need to overcome.
Fleet leaders have plenty of metrics to track, but not every number deserves the same attention. Miles per gallon, or MPG, is a good example. Fuel matters because it is one of the top three categories in a fleet program, but a one- or two-MPG difference should not drive the whole vehicle decision. What is published by the OEM and what happens in reality can be very different things. How drivers actually use the car can make a far bigger difference to MPG once the vehicle is in your fleet.
That is why Jennifer’s advice is to “make sure you look at your TCO, and also utilization.” A vehicle may cost more upfront, but maintenance, repair costs and reliability can change the picture over its lifecycle. If a vehicle is on the road, it should be used. Compliance also needs a plan. Oil changes, mileage reporting and rental usage can be tracked, but if drivers ignore reminder after reminder, more emails won’t increase diligence.
Mobility is becoming a broader conversation for field-based employees because not everyone needs a company car. As Jennifer said, depending on where employees are going and what their travel pattern looks like, a company car might not be the best solution. Some employees may drive regularly but not enough for a company car, while others may be better suited for a fixed and variable rate reimbursement program or a car allowance.
To make the right decision, fleet leaders need to look beyond the data available from the traditional fleet program. Jennifer pointed to mileage, rental car data, and broader travel data as part of that holistic view. That can show where there is leakage, where someone without a car may need one, or where mileage, FAVR, or car allowance may work better. The challenge is that data can’t collaborate, so teams need to know where it sits and how to make sense of it.
Business transitions will keep happening. Fleets will keep integrating, divesting, changing, and adapting. The strongest programs are the ones that prepare before the pressure arrives.
That starts with knowing where you stand. If there are challenges with your fleet partner today, are you willing to live with that pain for the next 10 years? If an acquisition or divestiture happened tomorrow, could you quickly identify the drivers, vehicles and inventory involved? And when it comes to drivers, do they know what to expect, and do they have a way to share feedback?
Business transitions are part of fleet management. Connect with our to build a fleet transition plan that helps keep drivers productive and the business prepared.