I was recently interviewed to provide a perspective on the origins of the fleet accident management and safety services business. This seemed like a worthwhile cause and I felt it could also provide for a colorful orientation for those of us who may not have been around in the early days, or have forgotten how this business emerged and evolved. So, I made two phone calls and interviewed some of the pioneers I worked with to validate what I remembered.
The first accident management business was SALEX, headquartered on New York’s Long Island, a company that opened its doors in 1973, but is no longer in business. It was named after its founding partners, Sal Crimi and Alex Gianopoulis, who were involved with a transmission franchise firm. With their eyes on fleet accident repairs, they teamed up with Frank Fitzpatrick who, with his brother was the owner of a successful body repair shop in Boston, one of the nation’s first dating back to the horse and buggy days. Fitzpatrick Brothers is still in business and, as a matter of fact, has been in the CEI repair network for many years.
It was Frank who helped SALEX create a network of independently owned body shops in order to service corporate fleets. He did it, he said, over the course of many drives from Boston to Long Island, and to this day recalls the exact mileage from his office to SALEX’s — 203 miles. But the effort was worth it, as SALEX soon brought on its first three fleet clients: Pond’s Hand Cream, which had 300 vehicles, Gillette and Dobbs-Life Savers.
In 1980, a fellow by the name of Earl Miller joined SALEX. His background was in auto insurance and glass claims, and he showed Sal and Alex how to incorporate loss recovery, or subrogation, into their business. Earl eventually left SALEX, spent several years at CEI and then moved to California to open his own body repair shop, called Corporate Collision, which is also a member of CEI’s repair network. He has since told me that when Alex was pitching to a prospective fleet customer, he would always say, “Earl, tell them about that new program we have that starts with the letter ‘S’ ! ”.
So that was how the accident management business as we know it today got started, but it didn’t get that name until a few years later. I got into the business in 1983. At the time, I was partner in a Philadelphia collision repair shop that was in two fleet management companies’ repair network, SALEX’s and another company called Gelco, current day’s GE Fleet.
To me, their business seemed simple, and I thought I could do a better job, given my understanding of drivers’ needs. Boy! Did I learn fast that it wasn’t as easy as it looked. Anyway, to differentiate my company from those two, I introduced the term — “accident management,” and it has stuck to this day. Within three years, our industry was always referred to by that name. In fact, PHH introduced this term in the UK where it is a very popular service among fleets, insurers and private claimants.
Oddly enough, it didn’t dawn on me until years later that we weren’t actually managing accidents. What we were really doing was managing claims services in response to auto accidents, the accident repair process. If we were managing accidents themselves, the actions that caused accidents to occur, we would be preventing them. But over the years, their number was growing and accident rates climbed.
How CEI ended up managing accidents through “prevention” is really another story, which I will blog about another day to tell the story about our DriverCare solution. But for now, I’d say we owe a debt of gratitude to both Frank and Earl for leading the way in the early days. I personally thank them, and am happy to say that today both are very strong providers to our customers under the CEI Accident Management program. Way to go guys! (And thanks for filling in the details on how we got started.)