Telstra’s Senior Fleet Lead Steve Ellis has been crowned the 2021 Fleet Manager of the Year at AfMA’s Annual Networking Dinner & Fleet Awards Ceremony.
Over 400 people gathered at the Crown Palladium, Melbourne on May 20 for an evening of colour, good food and fantastic entertainment to recognise the very best in fleet leadership and automotive management.
“When I think about the AfMA dinner itself, to have so many fleet experts in the one room – the networking opportunities available have been excellent,” Steve said.
“To win this award and receive this recognition is a real honour.”
Having spent more than 43 years working with Telstra, Steve has certainly seen it all. Despite an already impressive career, the last twelve months demonstrated Steve’s ongoing leadership and fleet prowess on an even deeper level.
“We’ve been reducing our surplus fleet and we continue to transition to more fuel-efficient vehicles – at the end of FY20, 20 per cent of our operational fleet were hybrid vehicles.
Doing so saw Steve and his team introduce hundreds of hybrids into the fleet to replace large legacy station wagons, which has led to a 28 per cent fuel reduction.
“We’ve also expanded our work with Greenfleet to not only include our executive cars, but our whole operational fleet,” he said. “Already 1.8 million trees have been planted across Australia.”
For Steve adapting to an ever-changing industry has keen critical to his success.
“The whole company is transforming into a simpler operating model and that’s exactly the same in our fleet – we want to make sure that our vehicles are being utilised fully so that there’s no waste.”
As for encouragement of other fleet managers looking to grow and develop, Steve believes it’s all about embracing change and tackling uncertainty, particularly that caused by COVID-19, head on.
“It’s also imperative that fleet managers engage with the supply chain as fully as possible, because I believe that strategic partnerships really are the key to ongoing success.”
You can watch Steve’s journey below:
