Mercury has developed proprietary software applications to enhance and apply data-based analytics in the management of fleets.

These applications include fleet replacement planning and analysis tools, several fleet right-sizing tools, fleet performance assessment tools, green fleet assessment tools, and many more.

Fleet Replacement Planning & Analysis

Capital Asset Replacement Cost Analysis Program™ (CARCAP) is a Microsoft Excel-based fleet replacement planning and cost analysis program that projects near and long-term vehicle (and/or other fixed asset) replacement costs, depreciation costs, residual values, funding requirements under alternative financing approaches (e.g., lease, debt, reserve fund), replacement charge-back rates, and replacement reserve fund balances using proprietary macros and configuration. The program is designed to assist organizations in determining the best way to finance the replacement of capital assets such as vehicles and motorized equipment and in managing a systematic asset replacement program on an ongoing basis.
CARCAP employs two types of inputs to produce the above outputs: planning and analysis parameters and fleet inventory data. Because all analyses are parameter driven, the program is particularly well suited to analyzing the effects on an organization’s long-term fleet replacement funding requirements of changes. These changes can include such variables as fleet size and composition, vehicle utilization levels, replacement cycles, purchase prices, inflation rates, and interest rates. Moreover, combined with our Green Fleet Assessment tools, we can model the marginal costs of replacing conventionally fueled vehicles with alternative fuel and electric vehicles, facilitating the insight necessary for organizations to plan their funding and financing needs as fleets move toward evermore environmentally friendly solutions.

Optimal Replacement Cycle Analysis (ORCA™) is a proprietary software tool developed by Mercury to conduct vehicle lifecycle cost analyses (LCA) with user-specific data. The tool allows Mercury to tailor the base information to specific needs, use actual or predictive costs, and adjust variable costs in a way that directly reflects the operations at hand. Mercury has refined the standard LCA model to fine-tune the input data, reflecting the actual operations of each client and returning results based on solid empirical data. It returns results, which determine when the replacement of a vehicle would be the most beneficial to the overall fleet operation, as well as determines any incremental costs of retaining vehicles for periods longer than the ideal replacement year. ORCA also has the ability to determine vehicle lifecycle costs under different fuel type scenarios.

Fleet Rightsizing, Right-Typing & Utilization Analysis

Vehicle Allocation Methodology (VAM) is a structured approach used by Mercury to assist organizations in performing a study on the size of their fleets with the intention of improving the quality of their fleet management and operating practices while reducing costs. A VAM study provides an organization with an evaluation of each fleet asset to determine its current utilization and makes future recommendations on whether to retain or eliminate the vehicle. The process considers not only the overall utilization of vehicles, but provides measures, which quantify the need for mission-critical vehicles. Once the initial data is collected and analyzed each vehicle is compared against a threshold set of data based on the organization’s data, and vehicles that fall below the threshold are recommended for elimination. The use of the organization’s data to develop the thresholds allows organizations with different geographic profiles, class mixes, and missions to use this tool and avoid a “one size fits all” approach to thresholds.

Mercury’s eVAM tool incorporates an automated vehicle right-typing and justification protocol that determines a vehicle’s unique ability to provide a specific service to the organization. eVAM analytics allow an organization to objectively right-size the fleet, right-type the fleet, and reduce costs and carbon footprint while maintaining or enhancing service levels. An optional fuel-typing feature allows fleet organizations to analyze various outcomes to consider when switching to different types of fuels.

This fleet rightsizing process involves defining each fleet user group’s asset requirements as though their fleet were being built from scratch. It is analogous to zero-based budgeting. The process requires assembling and reviewing an array of information on the performance of activities which require the use of fleet assets, the manner in which such assets are currently used, and alternatives to meeting these asset needs. This information is used to develop standardized definitions of each fleet-dependent activity performed by a given user group in terms of the nature of the activity; the seasonality, predictability, frequency, and duration of its performance; the number of employees engaged in its performance; the types and quantities of fleet assets needed to support its performance; and the uses of those assets (e.g., passenger transportation, mobile work platform, emergency medical response, etc.). Once these aspects of each activity have been defined preliminarily, consideration can then be given to the most cost-effective ways to furnish the needed fleet assets, which is likely to include various combinations of owned assets assigned to specific employee positions and work groups, owned assets shared among multiple work groups (i.e., motor pools), rented assets, and personally owned vehicles.

While more laborious than other right-sizing approaches, both for the client and Mercury staff, this approach has several key advantages for fleet owning organizations. For one, it addresses right-typing needs thoroughly as it forces fleet user organizations to rethink and define fleet asset requirements in a structured fashion relative to its current mission and associated operating, staffing, and asset deployment and usage practices. Furthermore, in performing the various exercises and analyses necessary to determine fleet asset types and quantities, Mercury effectively develops a Table of Equipment which will play a significant role in helping the organization maintain a right-sized and right-typed fleet moving forward, as precise asset type and quantities are associated with specific roles and work groups within the company.

Motor pool units inherently require a different approach to fleet utilization management than permanently assigned vehicles. As these assets are shared and can be used for a wide array of programs, events and activities, the need for such assets can be tied fundamentally to their utilization. However, the key utilization metric in pooled assets is the frequency with which it is rented. Whether the renter drives many miles, or only a few, to move him/herself, a team of people, or just a few boxes, the need for the asset is justified in the user’s willingness to allocate resources to its use. As such, we can look at historical rental data as a means of determining the quantity of assets necessary for any given asset type and make recommendations on how best to manage dynamic inventory practices to account for the ebb and flow of rental demand.

Mercury has developed multiple other proprietary tools for rightsizing a fleet for various use cases such as school buses, sanitation, law enforcement, etc. These tools determine the right fleet size based on the various requirements of the specific use-case. For example, school bus fleet rightsizing determines how many buses of each type (regular and special education) are required based on the number of trips that occur throughout the day, their associated capacities, and the feasibility of folding routes based on school bell requirements.

By calculating a variety of fleet utilization statistics delineated based on both asset class and use-case, Mercury is able to suggest minimum use thresholds for every asset in the fleet. These thresholds can then be utilized to establish policy about asset allocation requirements, trigger reviews for asset elimination or reassignment, and suggest alternative metrics by which fleet utilization should be measured for each specific use case.

Green Fleet Assessments

By analyzing variety of detailed utilization data derived from fleets’ telematics systems, Mercury can develop a detailed use-case profile for driver/operator behavior. In doing so, we are able to identify where existing vehicle operational needs can be served by commercially available electric vehicles, the optimal battery sizes needed to support vehicles that do not currently have a commercially available EV option, the volume, frequency, and regularity of vehicle travel days beyond EV battery ranges. We are also able to estimate the expected energy consumption and charging needs of the recommended EV portion of the fleet at each location, which will facilitate serious both near- and long-term term infrastructure planning and electricity cost consideration. The results can then be augmented by additional use-case considerations such as cargo and towing load requirements that may impact the suitability of current EV options. A similar approach can be used for other alternative fuel vehicles such as natural gas applications.

The Carbon Footprint Reduction Analysis will analyze the effects of changing assets’ fuel type to electricity, hybrid, or other alternative fuels, as well as simply replacing assets with a new, more fuel efficient one. This analysis allows us to calculate the reduction in both tailpipe emissions and charging emissions, providing clarity on the environmental benefits of transitioning from traditional internal combustion engine vehicles. While a reduction in tailpipe emissions is a useful metric, the charging of electric vehicles also contributes to total carbon emissions. As of 2019 in the U.S., 63% of power generated comes from power plants that produce CO2. When looking by state, this can range from 0.1% in Vermont to 95% in West Virginia. Using the data published by EIA and other official sources, we can estimate the additional CO2 emissions of electricity generation when charging BEVs and PHEVs to give a true carbon footprint and the resulting reduction.

Using our fleet replacement tool, Capital Asset Replacement Cost Analysis Program™ (CARCAP), we can run various scenarios that incorporate changes in the fleet make-up. Specifically, these scenarios can look at changing the assets in the fleet to EVs or other AFVs. With these scenarios, we can model the marginal costs of replacing conventionally fueled vehicles with alternative fuel and electric vehicles, facilitating the insight necessary for organizations to plan their funding and financing needs as fleets move toward evermore environmentally friendly solutions.

Mercury utilizes Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to perform optimal location-based analyses for locating EV Charging/Fuel Sites. Fleet owning organizations reduce both direct (fleet asset) and indirect (operations units’) costs by optimizing their site locations. Our models provide a precise view of current, desired, and optimal location arrangements by analyzing both service area and domicile locations to determine the best sites to place EV charging/fuel sites. There are two common types of location analysis. The first is site search where our model is aimed at selecting a set of sites, or search area, to be used for site selection. The second is site selection where our work enables the selection of the most suitable location from within a set or area.

Fleet Performance Assessment

Mercury developed its fleet-specific activity-based cost analysis of services (COS) to identify the actual cost and appropriate rate for each service provided by a fleet management organization. Our process includes the following best practice key features and characteristics: 1) identification and recovery of all applicable direct and indirect fleet management service delivery costs; 2) fully documented cost determination, cost allocation, and unit-cost calculations; 3) the use of logical, intuitive analysis steps that are easy to follow, explain, and update on an annual basis; 4) the promotion of fleet user organization awareness of, and a sense of ownership of and accountability for, the costs of the fleet resources and services they consume; 6) promotion of fleet services organization awareness of and accountability for the cost competitiveness with which it furnishes these services; and 7) minimal cross-subsidization of costs across fleet user organizations and fleet management service delivery “lines of business.”

The Fleet Data Health and Performance Report Card is a proprietary tool that calculates the current data health of the provided inventory to determine whether your data is healthy, needs improvement, or unhealthy by specific data issues and overall. After the health of the available data is calculated the tool then performs a targeted quantitative data analysis to benchmark fleet business practices such as replacement planning and financing, utilization measurement, fleet resources, fleet management, fleet service costs, fleet safety, and green initiatives.

Decision Support

Mercury utilizes Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to perform optimal location-based analyses for multiple strategic business decisions, such as locating EV Charging/Fuel Sites, M&R Facilities, Motor Pool placement, Parking facilities and Warehouse sites. Location analysis is a technique for discovering, assessing, and specifying the optimal placement of an organization’s people, vehicles and equipment, activities, and materials, with the understanding that fleet owning organizations reduce both direct (fleet asset) and indirect (operations units’) costs by optimizing their site locations. Our models provide a precise view of current, desired, and optimal location arrangements by analyzing both service area and domicile locations. There are two common types of location analysis. The first is site search where our model is aimed at selecting a set of sites, or search area, to be used for site selection. The second is site selection where our work enables the selection of the most suitable location from within a set or area.

Mercury can provide decision support tools for determining the most cost-effective means for meeting fleet needs. Based the organization’s own fleet cost data, and utilizing a customized use and need profile questionnaire, this tool considers asset ownership, commercial rental, internal motor pool rental, POV reimbursement and public transportation options to provide the most cost-effective option for the specific need and planned use of the fleet user.

By considering current capital and operating costs of congruent fleet-owned assets, Mercury can calculate a breakeven point for determining existing POV mileage reimbursements and/or vehicle stipends. Then, by applying logic-based decision tree automation, the organization can make reasonable decisions about providing staff with a fleet vehicle, and estimate the savings associated from going from the current assignment to the new optimal one.

Vehicle Equivalent Units (VEU) Analysis is a fleet management technique used to evaluate vehicle performance metrics. This analytical approach expresses each piece of equipment in terms of its equivalent to a baseline unit of measure. The most common baseline used is a standard fleet sedan, which is given a VEU value of 1.0. All other types of equipment are assigned a VEU value in terms of their relationship to the maintenance level of effort of a standard fleet sedan. By aggregating all of the vehicles in a fleet in terms of their vehicle equivalent units, uniform standards and benchmarks can be applied regardless of the fleet’s size, type, or configuration. Combined with other key pieces of fleet staff and asset performance data, VEUs can then be utilized to estimate fleet staffing needs (i.e., number of mechanics, parts staff, supervisors, etc.) as well as fleet facility needs (i.e., work bay quantity, size and configuration, parts space, administrative space, etc.)