Interview with Fred Bulterman
Tell us about Union Leasing's government group.
I run Union Leasing's Government Services Department which handles leasing and fleet management services for the federal government, state government and municipalities; the state and municipalities being a very growing market in the leasing. I've been involved with the federal government for 25 plus years in leasing.
We see the state and municipal market as a growing market. With their budget cuts, they have less money and still have to support all of the services, so many are now starting to look at leasing.
How does leasing to government entities differ from leasing to corporations?
The government leasing is traditionally a closed-end lease where Union Leasing bears all of the responsibility and all of the risk for the value of the vehicle at the end of the lease. On the corporate side we are predominately writing open end, or finance leases, where the customer - the lessee - is bearing all of the responsibility for the residual risk.
Some leasing companies have been hesitant to lease to the public entities. How does that work for Union Leasing?
Obviously, we have to structure our leases around their funding. Some entities can commit to long term funding where they can commit the money to 24-month leases or 36-month leases or longer. On the federal side, they can generally commit the funding to 12 months at a time. Basically, what we do is set up our leases as 12-month leases with options to extend for 12 month periods out to three, four or five years. In essence, what you are writing are four or five 12-month leases, so it reduces our risk level at the back end of each of those 12 month periods.
What types of services do the government entities usually use?
We are finding now, especially in the municipal and state level, that more and more of the agencies are looking at fuel management and maintenance management programs that we traditionally would not have sold them in the past. Even on the federal level they are now doing that because their budget is shrinking. They don't have the shops - the shops are being shut down - so they are having to find other ways to maintain their vehicles. We are selling them one package where they have all of the vehicles. Everything is being billed to a central location and then we also have a web portal where they can get reports for their maintenance management, fuel management and exception reports as well.
What trends are you seeing in the government fleets?
As I mentioned, we are seeing a lot more government entities looking at leasing that have traditionally purchased their vehicles. We've had many police departments that have always been buying their vehicles and have said that they would never look at leasing, but are now considering lease purchase programs or closed end leasing programs for some of their undercover vehicles.
Obviously, as we see the winds of change here at FedFleet, the big push is to go green. A lot of the vehicles that we are supplying are flex fuel, hybrids and diesel engines because they are mandated by EPA to have a certain percentage of their fleet be fuel efficient and to be green.
BIO: Fred Bulterman began his tenure in the Government Fleet industry in the 1980s in Connecticut. From 1984 to 1992 he held the role of Vice President of Business Development for Classen Government Services in Stamford, CT. After many years of life on the East Coast, as well as throughout the world, Fred and his family returned to his birth place of Illinois to launch Capital Leasing Services where he served as President from 1992 to 2005. When a unique opportunity to develop the national Government Leasing division of Union Leasing arose, Fred took the opportunity and has been at Union Leasing as the National Account Manager Government Leasing since 2005.
Fred and his wife Dawn reside in Cary, Illinois. They have two children, Lindsay & Tyler.
CONTACT: fbult@unionleasing.com
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