FLEET PROFILE
A PLAN FOR
GROWTH
Since Will Smith joined Vector Resources, the company has expanded from a cable installation business to a major IT network provider for Fortune 500 companies. Learn how Smith has managed the fleet to keep pace.
I
BY TA R I Q K A M A L
IT’ S AN UNCOMMONLY R AINY
morning at Vector Resources Inc., and the lobby of the company’s Torrance, Calif. headquarters is host to a parade of visitors coming in from the cold. They’re a contingent of employees of information networking giant and Vector business partner Hewlett-Packard, stopping to sign the guestbook on their way to the office’s first-floor classroom for a daylong training session. That a Southern California-based IT network solutions provider should
Smith is able to monitor Vector’s fleet from a custom-built command center in his office. 16
BF0111vector.indd 16
BUSINESS FLEET
play host to representatives of one of the world’s largest corporations comes as no surprise to Will Smith. As Vector’s director of fleet services and warehousing, he has played both witness and accomplice to the company’s two decades of steady growth. BIGGER, STRONGER, FASTER Vector Resources was founded in 1988 as a communications cable installation business. In the two-plus decades since, the company has expanded to 350 employees and now takes on massive systems integration projects, designing, installing and maintaining networks for clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies to large urban school districts to major hospitals and logistics centers. When Smith joined the company’s five-man warehouse crew in 1999, the fleet matched the company’s still-slender profile. “When I started my career at Vector, we had one location and four vehicles,” he says. “A 1999 Dodge cargo van, a 1999 Chevy stakebed, a 2000 Chevy Silverado pickup and a 1980-something Toyota pickup we called ‘Little Red.’” Under Smith’s watch, that fourvehicle fleet grew to 30 mediumduty trucks, cargo vans and pickups, with four more to be added this year. The company now has four locations, each of which soon will serve as a sales and distribution point. The newest office — and first outside California — is in Phoenix. Each distribution point requires at least one medium-duty box truck, which will double as a mobile workstation. Each of Vector’s five box trucks racks up 8,000–10,000 miles
per year, as do the company’s two stakebed trucks. Then there’s Vector’s fleet of 17 vans, which make an average of 15,000–20,000 miles’ worth of service calls each year. CALLING IN REINFORCEMENTS As the number of vehicles grew, managing the fleet became a full-time job on its own. But Smith remained in charge of Vector’s warehouse and equipment purchasing operations, and it soon became clear that he would need help on the fleet side. His search for assistance would lead him to Enterprise Fleet Management and account manager Tony Rangel. “Before Vector partnered with Enterprise, Will was handling everything in-house, including acquisition, maintenance, fuel oversight and disposal,” Rangel says. “Outsourcing those functions to us has helped free up his time to focus on other core responsibilities.” Additional benefits include Wright Express fuel cards, which Smith says offered a “significant” cost savings over their old provider, and the streamlining of fleet costs, which saves money and headaches in Vector’s accounts payable department. The new partnership led to several changes in Smith’s approach to fleet management. First and foremost, he was able to streamline his process for
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2011
1/12/11 2:55:41 PM