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MEXICO - Transport

Manuel Tamayo

Country Head Mexico, Element Fleet Management

Bio

Manuel Tamayo is currently Country Head for Element Fleet Management Mexico. Prior to taking over the country head role, he was the VP sales. Tamayo has 12 years’ experience in sales and holds an industrial engineering bachelor’s degree from Universidad Anahuac and an international MBA from EADA Business School in Spain. Before joining Element, he was with Santander Mexico and, before that, GE Capital business, a General Electric subsidiary, in Mexico.

"Mexico, as a key market, has played a vital role in Element’s growth."

Element Fleet Management wants to raise greater awareness of fleet management as an industry in Mexico and help companies become more profitable and their fleets more efficient.

What role does Mexico play in Element’s international strategy?

Mexico, as a key market, has played a vital role in Element’s growth. We operate in five countries: Mexico, Canada, the US, Australia, and New Zealand. However, Mexico started the growth journey earlier than the US and Canada, and some of our growth strategies originated here. Mexico has become a strategic market with extensive growth and the largest growth country for Element outside the US. We manage around 1.5 million vehicles globally. We generate many synergies from North America, pursuing global integration and best-practice sharing for our clients. That has created a great deal of support for our growth strategy.

What trends are you seeing in fleet management in Mexico?

Fleet management as a whole in Mexico is a term that lacks full understanding. We approach companies and talk about what it involves, discussing leasing or maintenance management, thereby effectively creating the industry in Mexico. For example, we talk about self-managed fleets—fleets that serve a core business like medical distribution. The company internally manages that fleet, and this is the largest growth opportunity for Element in Mexico today. We estimate that about two-thirds of the fleets in Mexico are self-managed. Companies still manage their own their fleet, even though their core business is not related to it. It is not their specialty, and that is where we offer to manage that part of their business. We assure them of the highest efficiency levels, making it more profitable for their company. We scale our business, technology, and suppliers using our business model to better serve the fleet, so they can focus on their core business.

Which industries have registered the greatest demand for such services?

We see activity from the F&B and pharmacy industries. There is now more adoption in logistics and last-mile delivery companies like DHL or FedEx. Such companies are more open to taking a look at our services and assessing how we can add value to their overall processes or operations. Consumers want to receive their products quickly, and there has been major growth over the past few years. More companies, not only logistics or last-mile delivery companies, but also retailers, have started creating fleets to service their clients or distribute their own products, and we have moved on this opportunity.

How can Element help companies increase the safety of their fleets?

There is safety in terms of excellence, which is also a major trend for our industry. That also encompasses our ESG initiatives. Theft is a serious issue in Mexico, though fortunately, most of our fleets have few such incidents. We help them out with telematic devices, and we bring in suggestions and speakers to talk about safety concerns. Fleet management as an industry is working hard to foster that awareness. It is a social responsibility we have as an industry to do better. Element manages 110,000 vehicles in Mexico, which makes up 110,000 drivers or more. If we can impact 10-20% of our drivers, that is already a major impact for the country as a whole in terms of traffic, driving behavior, and accident levels. We are working with many of our clients on training and creating awareness. There is the term “gamification” that I like talking about with clients, because it brings a sense of fun to raising awareness and reducing accidents in fleets. Technology also helps us a great deal today, and we use telematics to deep-dive into every aspect of what happens in a vehicle. It is like GPS on steroids. We can measure all kinds of driving behavior in real time, with hard data for each vehicle in a fleet. This enables us to focus on the areas of opportunity for a fleet to improve than with just training alone. For example, we can identify if drivers are bad at braking and give them specific remedial training. This impacts both the performance and safety of a fleet.

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