Exploring the ZeroMission and Mercury Fleet Consultants Partnership: A Case Study

Exploring the ZeroMission and Mercury Fleet Consultants Partnership: A Case Study

Understanding the Players

In today's evolving landscape of fleet management and electrification, collaborations are vital for success. A prime example of this is the partnership between ZeroMission and Mercury. Brad Smith, a seasoned consultant from Mercury, shares insights into this collaboration and the impact it had on our first joint client.

Mercury, with a robust legacy of about 25 years, specializes in fleet management consultancy. Brad, who has spent 30 years in the fleet industry, including 22 in the Army, has a comprehensive understanding of vehicle management and operations. His expertise has facilitated Mercury's high-caliber advisory services, recognized by numerous municipalities globally.

Challenges and Expectations

Our collaboration kicked off with a clear mission: a comprehensive fleet assessment for their client, which had no prior exposure to the zero-emission ecosystem. The client aimed to navigate the complexities of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) regulations while understanding the benefits and implications of integrating zero-emission vehicles into their operations.

As we delved deeper, it became apparent that both Mercury and ZeroMission are well-paired. Our combined expertise allowed for a thorough analysis of the client’s fleet and a tailored approach to addressing the challenges posed by the transition to zero emissions.

Strategic Approach to Fleet Management

The joint project focused on understanding the specific needs of the client, which operated across 35 locations. They adopted a granular approach, assessing everything from vehicle usage patterns to charging infrastructure needs. This level of detail ensured that the client could grasp the implications of transitioning to a zero-emission fleet comprehensively.

One critical aspect was right-sizing the fleet. Rather than adopting a one-size-fits-all approach, we worked together to ensure that the new vehicles selected were not only zero-emission but also appropriate for the tasks at hand. For instance, to replace oversized trucks with more compact, efficient vehicles for tasks like meter reading—realizing substantial cost savings while enhancing operational efficiency.

Key Outcomes and Client Satisfaction

The results of our collaboration were noteworthy. By refining the fleet strategy, they effectively reduced the number of vehicles exceeding 8,500 lbs and optimized the selection of electric vehicles suited for the client’s needs. This strategic alignment not only advanced the client’s ESG goals but also led to a more financially sustainable model.

The consulting teams also highlighted the importance of understanding the broader charging infrastructure required for these vehicles, considering energy use, usage patterns, and the financial implications of ongoing operations. This holistic view emphasized that sustainability extends beyond just environmental factors—it must also be economically viable.

Looking Ahead

Both Brad and the ZeroMission team are  excited about continuing our partnership. We are eager to lev

www.zeromission.io

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Our team Leah O'Dwyer, Kevin Christopher, Brenda Shanahan, Alan Crowley, Eduardo Espinal

Transcript

ZeroMission and Mercury Partnership Case Study 

 0:00
 So thank you, Brad, for joining us today.

 0:03
 Can we start off by having you first introduce yourself and Mercury?

 0:08
 Sure.

 0:08
 Thanks, Kevin.

 0:09
 My name is Brad Smith.

 0:10
 I've been with Mercury for about two years now and prior to becoming a consultant, I've been in the fleet industry for about 30 years, spent 22 years of that in the Army in various roles from from maintainer to to management.

 0:26
 So once I left the Army in 2014, decided to continue that that kind of that fleet theme and managed from school districts, heavy equipment to fire departments and ES fleets.

 0:39
 So really had a, a really good grasp on things as I moved into more of an advisory role in my career and decided to go with Mercury and Mercury Associates.

 0:51
 You know, it's been around for about 1/4 century.

 0:54
 Their, their processes, procedures for analysing replacements and, and things like that.

 1:02
 Has, has been award-winning and sought after by many, many fleets over the years from, you know, the state of California to many of the major municipalities in the United States, Canada and Australia.

 1:16
 So we, we really are a global entity and we'd like to pride ourselves on the fact that, you know, we are a dedicated fleet management consultancy.

 1:28
 We don't sell other products or services outside of the advisory role.

 1:33
 So that's kind of who we are.

 1:37
 And always, you know, again, just want to reiterate the, the partnership that we've enjoyed with 0 emission because we feel like the, the alignment of, of thought and the process is, is definitely important in there for us.

 1:52
 Thank you so much, Brad.

 1:53
 And I just want to reiterate for us and that we couldn't be happier with the, the developing partnership that we have and the work that we've done together in the space.

 2:00
 The thing that we've seen, I think that stands out for us about Mercury is, is exactly as you mentioned, it's in line with your approach to customers, the relationships that you typically have, the knowledge and the subject matter expertise that you bring on the fleet management side.

 2:13
 And that's really shown through in the engagements that we've done to date.

 2:17
 And we think that it creates kind of a complementary space for the both of us where you have that deeply rooted vehicle management, fleet management piece and we can bring in more of the specialist services, looking at the EV suitability portion, the charging infrastructure.

 2:31
 And as we continue to couple those services and engage with customers in the market.

 2:35
 And I'm very excited to see where that continues to adapt and and evolve and to shift gears more into the scope of work that we provided for this particular customer.

 2:45
 I was hoping you can maybe give us just a couple of bullet points on the high level scope that the customer was looking to accomplish, what the challenges that they saw were and and how we jointly approached that together.

 2:57
 Yeah.

 2:58
 You know, this being our first engagement together, very pleased with we were able to align with the fact that, you know, this client came to us within with an expectation that we provide a comprehensive fleet assessment, which is which is common for our engagements.

 3:15
 And then to add to that, they needed to understand just a little bit deeper their vehicle goals within their ESG and then what the regulations were bringing to them and how to navigate all of that because they had no exposure to the 0 emission ecosystems.

 3:36
 So when when we found that we weren't quite equipped to to manage the analysis of, of data that that we had, you know, you and I met at A at a, at a event and, you know, kind of I thought to myself, yeah, this really be something that's worthwhile specifically to this client.

 4:01
 And you know, as as things develop, we were able to, you know, look at this together.

 4:07
 And I and I think the output was important to this client because they were really able to understand globally what it meant to have a 0 emission future and then dialled in.

 4:20
 And, and that's really where our group, our work together comes in because when we dial that in and we, we and we provide that focus in on certain locations for clients like this that have 35 locations throughout a, throughout a geographic area.

 4:38
 Being able to 0 in on those and no pun intended, 0IN on those locations is important because they can understand down to that granular, granular level what, what the, what that ecosystem really looks like.

 4:53
 Whether that's from the, from the charging infrastructure and an amount of energy use to the vehicle usage and, and how they need to either adjust that vehicle usage or fit the vehicles within our operation.

 5:09
 So that was really, you know, the, the high level work that we did and the outcome was, was definitely something that they were pleased with.

 5:22
 Excellent, Thank you Brad for that.

 5:23
 And you know, just a couple of themes underneath that.

 5:26
 Just to reiterate, one of the things that we see frequently from various types of fleets, whether it's municipalities, you know, water utility districts or private fleets is this challenge around how to right size the 0 emission portion of their fleet.

 5:41
 And I think with an evolving kind of policy landscape, I think now, particularly with 0 emission vehicles, it really I think stresses the importance of making sure that you're making the right decisions as it relates to vehicle make and model for the use case that you have in the batteries appropriately looking out into that incentive market that is still there to see, you know, what can be coupled to projects.

 6:04
 And then some of the things you, you pointed out on the, the facility side is being really smart about developing a capital programme that's tailored to the vehicle operational needs.

 6:12
 I think what we would have seen you know, just generally historically is, you know, because of you know technology, ease of new technology and potentially concerns about the usability of that technology, maybe oversizing projects and you know, in an incentive rich market that you know may be something that can fly particularly for pilots.

 6:31
 But you know, as we're looking together at the real operational data, really tailoring down per each fleets use case and in this customers example, you know what that optimal kind of charging infrastructure pairing is to, you know, that kind of hypothetical electric vehicle piece.

 6:48
 And that's what I really enjoyed about working with you all because on the 0 emission side, you know, we're we're really specialist in the charging, the charging infrastructure, we understand the vehicle operations.

 6:58
 But I think it was really interesting to see how you all were able to take the analysis we put together and bolt that into right sizing the fleet and really tailoring the recommendations back to what this particular customer needed as opposed to having a one size fits fall and general recommendations that could ultimately have led to more of a, you know, maybe an over built or bloated capital model.

 7:21
 So we we really appreciate it working together in that vein.

 7:25
 And I mean to talk about some of the key results briefly here for this customer.

 7:30
 I think you, you hit on some of them actually in the last piece, but you know, can you talk just a little bit about what you saw went well for the customer and, and what they ultimately found value in at the end of our engagement together?

 7:42
 Sure.

 7:43
 I'm, I'm glad you mentioned, you know, that, that, that term you use and the right sizing.

 7:47
 I, I think that was another scope in, in the project that we were able to really dial in the size of their fleet.

 7:57
 And for a couple of reasons.

 7:58
 One, for that reason that you mentioned, you know, being an early adopter of the technology inside that space of vehicles that are over 8500 lbs.

 8:09
 And then how do we get our vehicles the right size for the job they're doing?

 8:15
 That's really something that we do very well.

 8:18
 We, we want to make sure that we're not using, you know, for instance, we're not using one tonne trucks to read metres where a sedan could do that.

 8:31
 And so we analyse that and make sure that we're getting the right equipment in the right location after we do that.

 8:40
 And one of the big results here was really the reduction of those vehicles that were over 8500 lbs and then giving that to you and 0 emission and then you helping us understand of those vehicles that we were going to implement, what were all of those contributing factors to the capital process?

 9:01
 And you're right, a lot of these companies, they see this and in the incentive rich environment that we live in, it's just easy for, for us to go out there and stack grants with opportunities that dealerships are giving or tax incentives and, and all the things right there.

 9:19
 There are just so many vehicles for, for incentives out there right now.

 9:23
 And when they see that it's, it's kind of, it's so difficult to get a hold of some of that funding that they think if I gather as much of that funding as I can, then I'm going to, you know, kind of be better off.

 9:37
 And then what we end up seeing is these organisations will do that, gather a whole bunch of resources and then 5-8 years down the line find out that all of those resources are, are basically running through their life cycle.

 9:54
 So we, we try to help them understand that we, we've got to smooth that out and purchasing over a over amount of time is important and using your data kind of helps them understand of how we need to smooth that out and including the energy costs and including the capital inside.

 10:12
 Again, that ecosystem that we talked about and, and really on, on this delivery for this client, all those elements were there.

 10:20
 And so, you know, it, it wasn't just one thing hanging on another, it was, it was all of all of the items in the delivery coming together to provide them a complete solution that's sustainable, right?

 10:33
 I mean, we talk about sustainability in our, in our space, but it means more than environmental, right?

 10:38
 It, it means it's, is it financially sustainable?

 10:42
 And so, you know, we look at it that way.

 10:44
 We love the environment, we love ESG.

 10:46
 We want our clients to be as compliant as they can with all of those things.

 10:51
 We want to further the, the, the idea that 0 emission vehicles are the future and, and they really are, but sustainability means both financial and environmental for us.

 11:06
 Yeah, thank you so much, Ryan.

 11:08
 I'm so glad you hit that at the very end there and that particular piece on, you know, the financial sustainability of these new technologies and especially what that looks like moving forward in the industry.

 11:19
 And I think maybe to wrap things up here, I just would ask you, you know, on the back of this project, we'll get you excited about the future in terms of, you know, Mercury's engagement in the market and and potentially also continuing to partner together on projects.

 11:34
 Yeah.

 11:35
 I mean, how else do I say it that it's exciting to work with a company that's doing such cus things that are on the cusp of being no other word supernatural for the for the, for the process.

 11:51
 Companies don't look at things this deeply and, and we love data and we look, we love being able to analyse things as deeply as possible and having that, having that analysis that we get back that shows us down to the vehicle level.

 12:08
 What, what is exactly the impact of that vehicle have on the entire financial process.

 12:15
 Whether that's acquisition of the vehicle, continue charging of the vehicle, the the cost of the charger, the use of the charger, the use of the vehicle over time, does that lengthen or shorten the lifespan of the vehicle?

 12:28
 I think there are so many things that we haven't yet tapped together.

 12:33
 We're both doing what we do very well within that silo.

 12:36
 But I think as we start to merge those two things together and become less vertical and a lot more horizontal in, in our processing, the the outcome for the clients is just going to be everything they need to have again that sustainable both environmental and financial future.

 12:57
 We're very excited about that because we have again, that expertise on the the asset management side, business management side.

 13:07
 You guys have all the expertise in the technical management side, a lot of the asset management from the, from the energy use, energy side.

 13:18
 And when we couple those things together, it's, it's just, it's going to be a very, very powerful thing for the industry.

 13:28
 We couldn't agree with you more, Brad.

 13:29
 And I think just to wrap things up here, we couldn't share that sentiment more.

 13:33
 I mean, going back to this initial engagement for our companies, it was great to have started with a plan, an idea and how this could fit in.

 13:41
 And we really appreciate that you recognise that this was a potential partnership.

 13:46
 And to see that we were able to deliver on that together and to find that the customer at the end of the day, you know, was able to realise those key results, you know, could we couldn't be happier with that and really look forward to finding those opportunities as we work together in the market going forward.

 14:00
 So again, Brad Smith, thank you so much for your time today.