New School Year Reminders

Now is the time to get your vehicle reservations in, students registered for driving training, and license reviews entered. Driver training registration forms are located on the safety and training section of our website and can be easily sent to us by email. Fall is our busiest time and larger vehicles get reserved quickly, especially on home football weekends. Our rental fleet is still smaller than we would like, particularly in the minivan department, and our outsourced vendors may have difficulty getting vehicles this fall.  So, please get your requests in as early as possible, especially If you have a special need, like pulling a trailer and will need a vehicle with a hitch.

Fuel Credit Card Reminder

Out of town and need gas? Every Fleet vehicle gets issued a Wright Express (WEX) fuel credit card for exactly this purpose. The cards work anywhere outside of Iowa City and Coralville and the current cards expire 5/24. If you have an old expired card or never picked up your new one let us know. Check out the WEX tutorial on our website, it is a good way to train new employees or refresh anyone who has not used the card in a while. You can find all our tutorials on the safety and training page.

When Are You Coming and Going?

If you make reservations for our rental vehicles please be as accurate as you can for the vehicle pick-up and return times. It is not unusual for us to send a vehicle out 30 minutes (or less!) after it has been returned from a previous reservation especially on Friday afternoons. So if a vehicle is returned late or picked up early that can cause us some real problems.

That being said, if you find yourself in a situation when you need to pick-up early or return late, just give us a call to let us know. We can always make that happen for you!!

Staff Shakeup

We had two of our Fleet staff members leave this month. Blake, our dispatcher, took a new position with his previous employer and Allison, our Service Writer, is relocating to Texas. We have started the hiring process for both positions and have other staff filling and sharing responsibilities in in the interim. Hopefully, we will have some new folks to introduce next month.

Training Explaining

Here is a refresher on the training required to use our vehicles in addition to the standard driver license review. Please do not wait until the last minute to set up required training. The courses have fees associated with them so an Interdepartmental Requisition signed by two people is required before anyone can be enrolled.

Employees - No training is required unless a trailer will be pulled with a daily rental vehicle.

Students -  If students are driving within the scope of their job responsibilities, no training is required. Otherwise, all students must complete the Defensive Driving online course. This training is required regardless of the type of vehicle driven.

Trailer - Everyone who plans to pull a trailer with a vehicle from the rental fleet must complete a short online course.

Honest Mike’s Used Cars is Back!

We have received some new cars recently which means it will soon be sedan season for us on GovDeals. We have two 2016 Ford Focus’ in the pipeline, a black one with 61k miles, and a silver one with 82k miles. We also have a white 2017 Ford Fusion Hybrid with 83k miles coming soon. Currently listed, with auctions ending 8/30, are a 2013 Ford F-250 with a plow and only 27k miles, a 2019 Ram 1500 Classic with 92k miles and a white 2019 Jeep Compass with about 73k miles. Check us out on GovDeals to see the vehicles currently listed.

Fleet Factoid

According to a recent study from iSeeCars.com, used car prices have started to level off a bit in the second half of 2022, but the same is not true for electric cars. In July, electric car prices saw an increase of 54.3% from the same month last year while gas-powered cars were up just 10.1%.