WSA Member Update 6.15.23

June 15, 2023  Dear WSA Members,  The direction fleets are headed in a big way is toward high-tech machines via a new set of technologies with the acronym A.C.E.S. (Autonomous, Connected, Electric, Shared) – The Future of Fleets. That’s the topic for a one-hour webinar to be held June 22 at 11am, PST. Promo invites you to join the FREE webinar, which “aims to inform fleet owners, operators, and managers about the ever-changing technology landscape that will continue to redevelop the nature of fleet vehicles.”  The presenter, Zo Rahim, is Senior Manager, Research & Market Intelligence at Cox Automotive. His primary role is to monitor developments in light, medium, and heavy-duty vehicles as well as understand changes in technology, mobility, and the economy. If the webinar sounds interesting, here is the link.  We have received a variety of information claiming that Transblue has not been paying for services performed at Lowe’s locations. The company allegedly has stated that it is not being paid by Lowes. However, one of the people who contacted us said they sweep for dozens of Lowes through other third party vendors and have had no payment issues. They also sweep for only about half-a-dozen Lowes through Transblue and haven’t gotten paid at all by them.  Here is a link to a collection of what is being said about Transblue online. Feel free to contact WSA if you have further questions, issues, etc.  One of our members asked if the WSA office had “heard any rumblings about Walmart changing payment terms to vendors.” If you have information on this topic please let me know.    Preventable injuries, commonly known as “accidents,” are the fourth leading cause of U.S. deaths. June is National Safety Month and the National Safety Council is offering targeted safety info on four different topics, as shown above, designed to “highlight leading causes of preventable injury and death so people can live their fullest lives.” These make excellent topics for your safety meetings. Here’s the link.  Our June Safety First! post is reprised from the late John Meola’s message ofJune 2019.  June’s Safety Message discusses the following: • Parking Cautions for Highways and Other Paved Surfaces • Ergonomics: Use Them! • Avoiding Hand and Finger Injuries • Summer-Specific Safety Reminders Your reaction to the previous Update’s “Excel for Dummies” link from SF.Tradepub was positive, so I decided to keep offering other free downloads of info from that source that at least some of you might find interesting. This one is a brief explanation of a way to search your LinkedIn connections for people they are connected to who might be prospects for becoming a client of yours. Use this link to see how you might do that.  As always, if you have questions or comments about this WSA Member Update, or anything else to do with the World Sweeping Association or power sweeping in general, please let me know.  Good Sweeping,  Ranger Kidwell-Ross, Executive Director World Sweeping Association