5 questions with … Fleet Advantage EVP Brian Antonellis
Antonellis spearheading data, AI initiatives amid industry shift
Commercial vehicle lessor Fleet Advantage is working to capitalize on growing demand for tech-driven asset management tools while navigating evolving replacement cycles in a pivotal year for the transportation industry.
With 20 years of experience working for private fleets, Senior Vice President of Fleet Management Brian Antonellis helps the company execute initiatives to support borrowers throughout the asset life cycle journey, he told Equipment Finance News.
Fleet Advantage’s end-to-end solutions include:
- Order procurement;
- Customized vehicle specifications;
- Maintenance optimization;
- Asset disposal;
- Vehicle upgrade support; and
- Flexible leasing.
The company also is embracing AI and data analytics to bolster asset management, Antonellis said.
These offerings come as Fleet Advantage adapts to industry changes, including low-emissions laws set to take effect next year, evolving borrower behaviors and stabilizing credit conditions after a yearslong freight recession, he said.
Antonellis recently sat down with EFN to discuss financing and asset management strategies, the commercial EV market and emerging technologies. What follows is an edited version of the conversation.
Equipment Finance News: How are macroeconomic conditions affecting fleet replacement cycles?
Brian Antonellis: Coming out of COVID, we had an exaggerated cycle. Spot rates jumped up dramatically, and then the market inversely cratered dramatically.
We’re finally into a market where it’s stabilizing. We saw pockets of improvement over the last 12 months, but over the last eight months, we’ve seen consistent improvement, and that’s driving the order boards on new equipment to fill up.
There’s also the regulatory environment that we’re going through. We’ve been talking about the 2027 emissions change, and to make that really simple, each truck is going to cost about $12,000 dollars more. There’s going to be a lot more complexity to run those trucks.
So, fleets are being careful about how many new trucks they buy in 2027 with this new technology and instead buying those trucks in ’26 so they have more control over the capital cost.
EFN: Among Fleet Advantage’s products and offerings, where are you seeing the largest increase in demand and why?
BA: I think one of the positives coming out of that volatility over the past several years is that organizations are realizing the importance of data. We have an API connection with our customers, pulling off of their ELD system, to get their miles and fuel economy. We also have an API with their maintenance software system to pull all of their repair data.
In the first year of a truck’s life cycle, from a maintenance expense standpoint, you start at a couple cents per mile at 100,000 miles a year, so it’s $2,000 to maintain it. By the time you get to year five or six, there’s this escalation, and you end up somewhere around 15 to 17 cents per mile, or $15,000 to $17,000 a year, to maintain it. That’s an unbelievable swing.
Because of that volatility, fleet operators are looking at when the truck should be replaced based on its economic life cycle and not on its functional life cycle. Trucks will run a million miles; you’re just going to pay through the nose once you get there. So, understanding exactly how that life cycle is going to progress, being able to compare it versus the industry, and then setting an expectation of why you should invest in your fleet, that’s what we do.
EFN: How can financing and technology support fleets’ transition to EVs?
When it comes to financing, it has to be a little bit different. The cost of EV is almost double, but the structure could still be the same. We can structure it as a fair market value lease and place a residual value on it. We could also help them with some of the infrastructure costs.
You want to have a lease that gives you flexibility at the end of the term and a funding partner that helps solve those unique challenges, whether they’re chargers, installs, different cap costs, etc.
As far as how our data helps, you need to understand how your fleet is running currently and how it’s going to compare to diesel. We have a product called Evan, which is our EV-versus- diesel calculator. It shows how many miles you run in your existing fleet and how many kilowatts of electricity you’re going to use, as well as the average charge for electricity in your state, because it can swing dramatically. We’ve seen some as low as 23 cents, some up to 60 or 70 cents.
We’ve invested internally in the resources so that we can support EV as it grows. We know it’s going to have to be a little bit different, and some other lenders have shied away from EV.
EFN: How is Fleet Advantage using AI to maximize your proprietary data?
BA: We’re using AI to help manage that data, vet that data, but really it’s about using it to understand irregularities coming in from the field. We still have a personal touch at the end of it, because a lot of times what happens is we don’t want the data to just be corrected because it acknowledges an irregularity. You have to go back to the customer and say, “We noticed in this location, your costs for this component are up 136%.”
Then there’s the other side of the business where we’re pricing, and we’re using massive amounts of data on historical trends for residual value. We’re using AI to help us dig through this data, find comps and find the averages of those comps so that we’re not digging through a lot of that [manually].
AI is helping us structure the data and make projections going forward, and when you’re thinking about your life cycle costs, we want to be able to say, “Here’s where you’re running in year four. If you run this truck into year five, here’s what we project.”
EFN: How do you expect AI to continue reshaping asset management and transportation finance?
BA: I think there are going to be more technology platforms and companies that figure out how to shift routes around with AI. Once you start bringing in traffic cameras, speed traffic patterns, lights, average distance from one to the other, I think there’s going to be just a change in the industry where we start using that operational data to drive efficiency into routing and safety.
As we’re starting to track and get our hands on accident data and action frequency by road and speed, the way that we route, ship and make decisions in transportation finance will improve. I think that’s going to be what we look back at five years from now in terms of how AI fundamentally changed our business more than almost anything.
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