Fleetio announced a new National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence (ASE) scholarship program to help address the shortage of qualified automotive and heavy-duty technicians among its fleet customers.

The program awards six scholarships to automotive technicians and students pursuing ASE certifications, creating opportunities to develop the next generation of skilled fleet maintenance professionals.

“For years, the fleet industry has experienced complex challenges with attracting and maintaining qualified maintenance technicians,” said Belinda Rueffer, Fleetio vice president of marketing, announcing the program at the American Trucking Associations Technology & Maintenance council annual meeting in Nashville March 9.

“The Fleetio ASE Scholarship Program provides an exciting opportunity for our customers to nominate deserving candidates and get the training and certification they need.”

Why Fleetio is Offering ASE Technician Scholarships to Customers

Fleetio offers a cloud-based fleet optimization platform giving fleets solutions and resources to run, repair, and optimize vehicles and assets. It helps fleets stay on top of preventive maintenance, inspections, processing work orders, whether maintenance is in-house or outsourced, so it's familiar with the technician challenges faced by its customers.

"One of the things that we keep hearing from our fleets is that they're having significant issues with recruiting and retaining qualified talent within their shops," Rueffer said. 

"Many of those fleets are resorting to recruiting from other industries, other programs and even from other countries, and then sponsoring those technicians' ASE certifications themselves. 

"So as we kept hearing those stories, those stories inspired us to find a program like this or develop a program like this so that we could give back and help help offset some of those costs for those certification programs."

About the Fleetio ASE Technician Scholarship Program

The program awards one grand prize scholarship of $3,000 to cover registration and testing fees for three ASE professional-level certification tests and tool upgrades.

Five runner-up recipients each receive a $1,000 scholarship to assist with certification testing costs, tools or other supplies.

Fleetio's selection committee will evaluate nominations based on their commitment to advancing their careers in automotive repairs. 

Any current Fleetio customer can nominate a deserving automobile or truck service technician, or a student currently enrolled in a college-level automotive or medium/heavy duty truck training program. 

Nominations open March 31 and Close May 1. The scholarship recipients will be announced June 12.

TMC Training Exemption Gets Techs on the Job Faster

The Fleetio ASE scholarship dovetails into a new TMC exemption where ASE certifications can help technicians get into the workforce faster.

In January, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration granted an exemption to TMC that allows technicians to skip the federally required one year of training or experience needed to conduct commercial vehicle inspections and brake-related repair and maintenance — provided they received training based on TMC’s Recommended Practices.

The exemption allows motor carriers, intermodal equipment providers and individuals to self-certify that they have completed a training program based on TMC’s RPs. 

The program must provide at least 540 hours of classroom and hands-on instruction for new individual entrants. 

Or, the technician can meet the exemption with 210 hours of classroom and hands-on instruction after already completing at least 330 hours of combined classroom and hands-on experience — and who have taken and successfully passed the ASE Medium-Heavy Truck Certification Tests T4 - Brakes and T8 - Preventative Maintenance Inspection

Other Recent Fleetio Announcements

Fleetio recently launched its Shop Network Add-In for MyGeotab, embedding its Maintenance Shop Network directly into Geotab’s platform. This means mutual customers can now locate and direct their drivers to trusted repair shops, without leaving the MyGeotab platform they use 24/7.

The integration allows customers to view shop details, pricing and services in real time, and to pair vehicle tracking with maintenance coordination for smarter decision-making.

Fleetio, the leading fleet optimization platform, announced the development of its first Map Add-In for Geotab’s MyGeotab platform, enhancing its integration with the connected vehicle provider. The add-in enables mutual customers to quickly direct drivers to preferred vendors within Fleetio’s Maintenance Shop Network without leaving MyGeotab. 

Fleetio’s Maintenance Shop Network connects fleets with tens of thousands of national, independent and mobile service providers to automate and expedite the repair approval process and get real-time visibility into outsourced maintenance activity. 

By bringing Fleetio functionality directly into MyGeotab, the Shop Network add-in helps fleet managers and dispatchers coordinate service, reduce downtime and view preferred shop options based on a vehicle’s current location.