The 2026 AFLA Corporate Fleet Conference wrapped up this week at the JW Marriott Las Vegas, under the theme “Strategy Over Chance.” Our team spent the week in sessions and in plenty of hallway conversations with fleet managers, suppliers, and OEM representatives. If you couldn’t make the trip, here are the takeaways worth bringing back to your own fleet.

A Bigger Crowd and a Lot of New Faces

This year’s conference drew over 700 attendees, including many first-time attendees. That continues a run of growth AFLA has been on for several years. The 2025 conference in Marco Island set an attendance record at 648 participants, with more than 200 of them attending for the first time, and Las Vegas pushed past that mark.

The first-timer numbers say a lot about where the industry is going. Fleet responsibility keeps landing on people whose titles don’t include the word “fleet”: operations directors, HR leaders, procurement managers, and finance teams who inherited a vehicle program along with everything else on their plate. AFLA has become one of the most efficient places for those professionals to get up to speed, build a network, and hear how peers handle the same problems.

The attendee mix also shifted. More representatives from software, technology, and AI companies were in the room this year, which set the tone for the conversations that followed.

AI Was Everywhere, and the Conversation Centered on Data

Nobody was surprised that AI showed up on the agenda. What stood out was how quickly the discussion moved past broad promises and into the practical question every fleet manager is asking: what do I do with this?

The answer kept coming back to data. AI tools are only as useful as the information feeding them, and most fleets have that information scattered across fuel card statements, maintenance records, telematics platforms, accident reports, and spreadsheets that live on one person’s laptop.

For fleet managers looking to apply AI in a practical way, a few starting points came up again and again:

• Consolidate your sources. Fuel, maintenance, telematics, and accident data deliver far more value when they can be viewed together.
• Start with a specific question. Pick a problem such as rising maintenance spend, unexplained fuel variances, or replacement timing, and let that question guide which data you clean up first.
• Use AI to flag exceptions. The most immediate wins come from surfacing the handful of vehicles, drivers, or transactions that need attention so your team can stop combing through reports line by line.
• Keep a person in the loop. AI can identify a trend, and a fleet manager who knows the drivers, routes, and business context still has to decide what to do about it.

With tariffs, longer replacement cycles, and pressure to do more with less all on the table this year, better use of the data fleets already collect may be the most accessible efficiency gain available.

What Telematics Looks Like Today

For most fleets, telematics has matured into standard equipment. Today’s platforms track vehicle location, engine diagnostics, fuel consumption, idle time, and harsh events like hard braking and rapid acceleration. Many also support compliance reporting and maintenance alerts.

For many organizations, the challenge is follow-through. Fleets often collect far more telematics data than they act on, and alerts pile up without a clear process for who reviews them or what happens next.

Where We Think Telematics Is Headed

Based on what we saw and heard in Las Vegas, we expect the next phase of telematics to be shaped by three forces working together: AI, camera technology, and a sharper focus on reducing risk.

• Video telematics will become the norm. AI-enabled dash cameras can now detect distracted driving, phone use, close following, and drowsiness as they happen, then deliver in-cab alerts that give the driver a chance to correct course before an incident occurs. Footage also protects drivers and companies by documenting what happened when a collision isn’t the driver’s fault.
• Systems will connect. Location data, camera events, maintenance history, and driver records are moving toward a single view. When those sources talk to each other, fleet managers can see the full picture behind a risky trend without piecing it together across four platforms.
• Risk management will become predictive. The long-term opportunity is identifying which drivers and vehicles are trending toward an incident and intervening early with coaching, training, or maintenance. Intervening before a claim is ever filed is where the largest savings sit.

Safety Depends on Driver Buy-In

Safety was one of the most meaningful threads of the week, and the strongest message was also the simplest: the goal of every safety program is getting drivers home safely at the end of the day.

Technology and policy both play a role, and neither works without the drivers behind the wheel. A well-written fleet safety policy accomplishes little if drivers see it as paperwork, and a camera program can quickly feel like surveillance if it’s rolled out without explanation. Fleets seeing the best results treat adoption as part of the program from day one.

A few practices that help earn that buy-in:

• Explain the why. Tell drivers what’s being monitored, how the data is used, and how it protects them, including in disputed accidents.
• Bring drivers into the process. Asking for input on policies and technology rollouts builds ownership and surfaces real-world issues early.
• Coach privately and consistently. Feedback lands better as a one-on-one conversation focused on improvement.
• Recognize good driving. Safe drivers deserve as much attention as risky events do.
• Lead by example. Policies carry more weight when managers and leadership follow them too.

When drivers understand that a safety program exists for their benefit, compliance follows, and the data becomes more reliable as a result.

Mark Your Calendar

If this recap has you planning ahead, here’s where AFLA is headed next:

• AFLA 2027: Fort Lauderdale, Florida
• AFLA 2027: Mississauga, Ontario
• AFLA 2028: Phoenix, Arizona

Whether you’re a fleet veteran or one of next year’s first-timers, it’s worth getting on the calendar early.

Let’s Keep the Conversation Going

If you connected with our team in Las Vegas, thank you. If you didn’t get the chance, we’d still love to talk about how your fleet can put its data to work, improve driver safety, and plan for what’s next. Contact EMKAY at 630.250.7400 or info@emkay.com.