When operating a fleet of vehicles, the safety of your drivers is paramount to the success of your business. From company morale to return-on-investment to your public image, everything will be effected by the way you implement your safety strategy. So, we found a helpful whitepaper on Automotive-Fleet.com that has excellent advice on developing an all-encompassing safety "culture" at your organization. 

We live in a highly subjective world. Indeed, one might say the entire human experience is an emotional and subjective one. But facts are not. People may use facts incorrectly, or even come up with false data in order to prove a point, but real facts do not pretend to be anything that they're not. They don't even exist for humans to use or interpret; in essence, they simply exist to hold the universe together. 

As the cold of the winter thaws, so do our vehicle and its structural components. The Spring is the perfect time to provide your automobile with a little tender love and care so it may achieve peak performance before hitting the highway.

Caritas Vehicle Services and our partners at LeasePlan USA have come up with a standard Springtime Maintenance Checklist.

We are living in a century of farewells to many reliable, traditional methods of living. The U.S. Postal Service is slowly becoming defunct as e-mail, text messaging and social media take its place with unsurpassed speed & convenience. Cinemas are suffering because of streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime (Blockbuster & friends are already long-gone). In a more relevant occurrence, the American "sedan" is losing popularity and U.S. automakers are abandoning its production. Coming to take its place? Well, we'll get to that. 

Vehicles are particularly delicate instruments of investment that, when owned by a business, should be properly tracked and managed in order to receive the greatest return possible. Thankfully, there are many experts on the topic of vehicle management solutions. One such seasoned veteran of the fleet world is our industry partner, Leaseplan. Their website contains an extensive database of blog articles & resources that are designed to help you maneuver the logistical intricacies of vehicle ownership and fleet management. 

The National Safety Council, or NSC, is a non-profit organization that is dedicated to reducing the number of workplace & on-the-road accidents that happen in the U.S. each year. According to the NSC's mission statement, they accomplish this through, "...leadership, research, education and advocacy." Caritas has found that the NSC has the most extensive knowledge base when it comes to driver safety.

In our last article about The History Of The Automobile, we told the story of how a young Henry Ford left his home on a Michigan farm to become a professional engineer and inventor, tinkering with gasoline-propelled vehicles and various methods of production until his ambitions were realized. His dream was to create an automobile that was durable, easy to maintain, and affordable to the average, working-class American. He is quoted as saying that he wanted to, "...build a car for the great multitude...so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one." A noble vision on Ford's part. However, the production of such an invention would require a significant amount of old-school trial and error. 

Ford conceived a series of automobiles, beginning with the Model A and ending in 1908 with the twentieth model intended for production. Ford named it the Model T, after the twentieth letter in the alphabet. Despite the lack of creativity in its naming process, Ford's newest invention would alter the course of American history by contributing to the growth of a strong middle class, driving an influx of immigrants and rural peoples to cities, influencing American culture, and revolutionizing industrial mass production. 

Our world of instant gratification and hand-held technology makes it so that distractions are completely inevitable. Every web-page you visit has targeted advertising, every app on your phone tries to send you notifications more often than anyone needs them, and social media has transformed into something of a feigned competition to update all of your friends on everything from momentous events like the birth of your child to unnecessary minutiae, such as the photogenic tacos you ordered. In fact, you're likely bouncing back and forth between web browser tabs as we speak. Meanwhile, I forgot why I was writing this article in the first place because the Chess app on my phone informed me that it's my move.  

If you're considering outsourcing the management of your vehicle fleet to a professional firm like Caritas Vehicle Services, it is important to consider the potential economic benefits of making such a decision. And, who would be more qualified to elaborate on these benefits than one of our respected clients? These are individuals who who have a clear understanding of their Community's financial position both before and after they partnered with Caritas.

"My minivan sold for how much?" My client asked, flashing a look of delight, surprise and slight disbelief. We politely reassured her that, yes, her para-transit minivan was sold at the previous week's Manheim Auto Auction for twice the sale price we anticipated. The minivan was originally acquired for $40,000, and the Mannheim Auction's "Condition Report" came back with some minor maintenance issues. This put our expectations at somewhere between $6,000 and $8,000. At the end of the day, Caritas received an e-mail from Manheim stating that the proposed highest bid was $14,600. Our client gladly accepted the offer.