I'm a car guy

In this episode of GSA Does That!?, we talk with Len Fedoruk, GSA Fleet's Director of Purchasing, who brings over 40 years of Detroit auto industry experience. Len shares how GSA is driving vehicle innovation and securing the best prices, including the rollout of electric buses at Zion National Park. Discover the challenges, successes, and visitor benefits in this fun and engaging conversation.

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"GSA Does That!?" is the U.S. General Services Administration's first agency-wide podcast, offering listeners an inside look into how GSA and its partners benefit the American people. Hosted by Rob Trubia, the podcast features interviews with GSA leaders, experts, partners, and customers, covering topics such as federal real estate, acquisitions, and technology. The title reflects many's surprise at the scope of GSA's impact. At the same time, the artwork pays homage to President Harry S. Truman, who established GSA in 1949 to improve government efficiency and save taxpayer money. Whether you're a policy wonk or just curious about government operations, you can join the listener community.

For more information about the show visit, gsa.gov/podcast.

Transcript

Rob Trubia
Hello and welcome to another episode of GSA Does That, the podcast that uncovers the stories behind the federal agency delivering effective and efficient government. I'm your host, Rob Trubia. And today we're hitting the road with special guest Len Fedoruk, the director of purchasing for GSA Fleet. Len draws on his 40 plus years of insider knowledge as a Detroit auto executive in his role at GSA.

His job is to ensure that his government customers get the right vehicle at the right price, no matter what the requirements are. We'll learn about GSA's innovative efforts to lead the way in modern automotive solutions, including the recent delivery of electric buses to Zion National Park in Utah. We'll explore the successes and the challenges behind this groundbreaking project, and I'll ask Len to tell us about how these new electric buses are affecting the experience for those visiting the park.

Len’s, an industry expert that's passionate, honest and optimistic about the future of GSA fleet. I know you'll enjoy this conversation. He's fun to listen to and you're sure to learn a lot from his insights. But before we jump in, please be sure to subscribe to GSA Does That!? and to learn more about our podcast. Visit us online at gsa.gov/podcast.

Len, it is great to have you here. Thanks for joining us on the podcast.

Leonard Fedoruk 
Rob. It's an honor. Thank you very much for asking me.

Rob Trubia
So you've got over 40 years experience as an automotive executive in Detroit. Tell me how you ended up at GSA.

Leonard Fedoruk 
You know, it's kind of interesting. My career, has been in the my passion is autos. Okay. It's the industry itself. The opportunity presented itself in, 2009, and a recruiter called me and just kind of said, hey, what do you think? I said, well, hey, it doesn't hurt to talk. I'm good at that. And went out to Washington and all I know is I got on the plane and next thing I knew, it was March 29th, 2010, and I started my career in the federal services with GSA fleet and the rest is history.

Rob Trubia
Good decision?

Leonard Fedoruk 
I yeah, absolutely. You know, it really was a soft landing. I mean, coming from the industry because, you know, GSA kind of operates that way. You know, we're we're really in the commercial market space. You know, it's the government's purchase arm. We're buying goods and services.

I mean, in my world, it's looking at vehicles and vehicle products. So whenever it says automotive, they go passenger sedans. More than that. I mean, we do everything from I use a technical term, class one to class eight. Class one is your passenger carrying in your class eight are your big trucks. These are your tractors that pull semi trailers, full command centers.

We buy it all. So and the services that go along with it, the kind of support those operations. So it was kind of a natural for that. And it was one of those things where I came, I said, you know, I'll give it a shot. And, I think I'll leave when I stop having fun. And it's it'll be 15 years in March.

I'm still having fun. How about your.

Rob Trubia
How about your friends in industry? They're like, what is Len doing?

Leonard Fedoruk 
it's been kind of interesting because, you know, this industry is built on relationships and it's really everybody knows everybody. So what's one of these things what's kind of like, well, you know, you're going to bring some of the best practices and you're going to bring some of our, sourcing secrets to the government.

You're going to use them against us. Oh, you betcha. Because we're going to lower those prices and we're going to get a lot smarter and what we did and it's worked out and it's been I think really, you know, to the government's benefit, let's take it all the way down to the taxpayer because we're getting values like we've never seen before.

You know, again, things are a little crazy in the market still, you know, recovering from Covid. We could talk a little bit about that. But no, it's been great and it's been very well received because, you know, they see it. Hey, he's one of us. He knows us. He knows the language. He knows the challenges. He knows the opportunities.

And being able to convey that back to the federal government. I mean, just beyond being the purchase director, we respond to all kind of inquiries from, you know, from the Hill, from the White House, from other federal agencies, and you're able to speak with authority on that.

Rob Trubia
Well, it's a cool job you've got. I mean, basically, it sounds like your job is to get the right vehicle in the hands of your government customer to carry out their mission, whether that might be the Department of Defense or maybe the National Park Service. And that's what I want to talk about, to just kind of kick this off.

You've got some pretty cool stuff going on at Zion National Park in Utah. Tell us a little bit about what you and your team are doing in Zion.

Leonard Fedoruk 
Well, again, Zion is one of the parks that we've we've done electrification, but it's I'll, I use the term this is the big Zion again. They were up for replacement of their vehicles. They were running propane buses. And again, propane were a lot cleaner than diesel. But you know the technology is there and it's a ball and the timing is everything.

And now what's happened is it's a combination of one helping meet the administration's objectives of looking at zero emissions. And the second thing is, Zion is an amazing place. And what they wanted to do is kind of send a message to all Americans. I mean, people even around the world that come to the park that, sustainability, environmentally, stewards and, kind of returning the natural order when you turn off an electric bus, you could actually hear the birds chirp, you can hear the I'll use the term the the screams of joy, of people enjoying the landscape.

And the fact is, is that there as an example, the older buses were never air conditioned. These electric busses that are in their different sizes, 40 and 60, I call them 63, but 60 plus passengers moved to the park when we were there was like 107 degrees. And these buses were air conditioned and people were like, this is absolutely amazing.

But the fact is, people are looking at say, hey, that's it, that's an electric bus. I've never seen one of those before. And when they look at it and touch it and feel it, it looks like a bus. It looks like what I'll see in my city or town or campus. But it's electric powered, it's clean, it's quiet, it's efficient, it's safe, and it's really cool looking.

So what's happening is we teamed up with the National Park Service and they had partners that they worked with, and they did their homework. Smart group of people. They worked with our friends at the Volpe Center, Department of Transportation did their study. They did their homework. They developed their mission requirements, and they came to GSA. Okay. A couple of reasons.

One, we're experts in this area. Number two were the mandatory source for non tactical vehicles, which basically means if you're buying a vehicle that doesn't have a gun barrel on it and it's a non tactical. You come to GSA. Congress gave us that authority. Why. So we could leverage the entire volume of the federal government. Go out there and get the best technology, the latest products and services from the best suppliers and at the best price.

And so they came to us. And what we did is we ran our what we call our play, our, my organization, we have three branches, as they call them, which are like departments and vehicle engineering was deeply involved. And we had some great people in that group. And I mean, there's been just a host of other people that I just can't even name.

Because it would take too long. But we work together as a team, so we have what we call the contracting or the acquisition side. Ours is the procurement side, which is the vehicle engineering, the purchasing and wallah. And here we are.

Rob Trubia
Talk to me about the charging. First of all, how long does it take to charge a bus. And did you say you put charging stations in the park or how does that work?

Leonard Fedoruk 
Yeah we didn't do it. Zion did. But what we did is our, our supplier that this was awarded to, offered the charging infrastructure, the actual charging stations and then of course, Zion worked, with the folks at the Department of Transportation and their supplier did the actual construction for it. A couple of things. You need about 1.5MW of power in order to power up those buses   in the number that they do in the routes.

That was not a heavy lift for the park because they were very, very well on the infrastructure side. As far as power, the second thing is, is that the, the charging units themselves were provided through the bus supplier that we worked. So you had the engineering teams and again, you know, I'll use company names here that we're not endorsing the products, but with are some very smart people out of there from BorgWarner

You had some very smart people from New Flyer MCI yet so really, really smart people again from Dot Bopi and other consulting firms that worked with and what they did was again, planning in this business is everything you measure twice and you cut once do the development, do the planning, install the infrastructure. 

Because here's the wonderful thing about EVs. And again, the audience may not know this. We have a process in EVs that's called regenerative braking, which means when you take your foot off the accelerator and the vehicle starts to coast out, it turns that heat kinetic energy in the brakes in the tires back into electric power and shoves it into the battery.

So what's happening is that when the busses run their duty cycle from the beginning of the day to the end of the day, they come back to the bus yard and they charge them. First thing they do is they're doing them after hours. So they're getting the best electric rate for the cost of the part, ultimately to the American taxpayer.

And number two, by going up the hill again, gravity, you're going to use more electricity. But when the bus makes the lap and goes down the hill, now you're picking up that magic of brake regeneration and putting power back into the battery. And it's really extended the range dramatically. They have yet to run a bus below 20%. The park infrastructure has been very well developed as far as roadways.

So what they wanted was to be able to send the theme that this is sacred ground, this is a sacred, you know, this park is one of the original parks that was there.

Let's keep it clean. And they have the ability to charge. And again, they have their maintenance yard. They're our supplier works with them as far as that for of course the vehicles are new. They're under warranty. But if there's any I'll use the term, any technical hiccups or anything the readily available to service those units and make sure that they keep running works seamless as a team.

That's something that a lot of people don't understand. We do at GSA and it's more than just buses. I could talk to you about ambulances. I could talk to you about mobile pharmacies to serve underserved populations for our VA's, our native tribes in as well as other communities. In disasters. FEMA, FEMA calls us before, during, and after hurricane season for equipment, whether it's providing vehicles that we may custom engineer or something that we're buying us commercially produced, or even our short term rental program, hey Len,

We need a bazillion electrical generators. We need cots. We need beds. We work with our other partners on the disaster side of the house, for example, for relief supplies. And we work with vehicles.

Rob Trubia
Well, you mentioned some some of the other types of vehicles. Give us some specifics. I'd love to hear, like, you know, something really specific that a customer needed it. And GSA came through and said, here's an idea, here's what we can do. And you sourced it. And now it's maybe, commonplace.

Leonard Fedoruk 
Well, understand there's two sides of our business. We, we have the GSA fleet side, which, we operate a turnkey leasing solution for our customers, got about approximately 235,000 vehicles that are leased fleet, which means an agency can lease from us or we provide the vehicle. We provide accident management. We provide maintenance management. We provide fuel cards.

We provide safe driver training. It's a turnkey. And again, looking at it from the commercial market, we're much cheaper than the commercial market because we have no cost of money, okay. We're a federal agency and so that saves our customers dollars. And so what they do is they rely on us and what they'll do is they'll come and say, hey, I need a vehicle.

And we're start asking the questions, what kind of vehicle? What do you want to do with it? What kind of mission it's going to be, what kind of drivers, what's going to be your duty cycles? And those are a lot of what I call the off the shelf vehicles, you know. So whether it's a postal inspector, whether it's a, you know, I'll say law enforcement, we have a huge law enforcement program.

We custom built vehicles in mass for all the federal police agencies, including the DoD. But on the special side, then we have purchasing. There are customers that have some unique requirements that they're so special that we typically don't lease those. But what we could do is I'll give you an example. The Veterans Administration, they came to us and they said, we have underserved communities, for our veterans in different regions of the country where typically a VA hospital may be literally miles away.

What can you do as far as mobile services, what kind of services? Well, we you know, we need dental labs. We need prosthetic labs to help set, you know, artificial limbs, pharmacy trailers. We'd like imaging labs where we could do X-rays, MRI. And then we said, okay, how many? When do you need them? And they were like, excuse me?

How many and when do you need them? So what happens again, our engineering team, along with our project program planning team and of course with our GSA fleet leadership, we all sit down and we look and we put together a project plan with the customer. We say, okay, this is what we have. We go out and we do the market research.

We do the market test, we develop what we call the cost estimates, independent government cost estimates. This is what what it's basically going to cost. Where are you on your funding. And we work with them. And once we do that we sign that agreement. We get to work and we'll go out and we'll work directly with our acquisition team contracting for sure, and we'll go out and we'll procure those goods and services.

And the best thing about it is the majority of these, these pharmacy labs that we built, these dental labs, this mobile prosthetic limb we call fitment where they come in and they can get their limbs adjusted installed, as we say, as far as, once they're produced, you know, by the VA from their source supply to fit the patient with it, the majority are going to small businesses.

So what's happening these awards are going to small businesses. We have a cadre of suppliers that do these specialized vehicles. That money that velocity of money is huge. And it's going in these communities. And you look at communities in the greater Cleveland, Ohio area. We've got suppliers out in Montana that do this, and typically in geographic locations around urban areas where employment is going to be critical.

And these are American jobs as well. So what's happening is everybody is benefiting from this. And along with that, we're the stewards. We're making sure that it's built to the customer specifications. And we have any questions we bring the customer in a good number of times we’ll bring them in is essential. We call it a design review. We have a built conference, and when we kick it off, we come in and hey, how's things are going and this is what's involved.

Let them take a looksee. And what happens is usually at the time of delivery, the supplier, a a customer like VA, GSA and the end user operators, they've known each other already because they've been involved in the process. Everyone's got skin in the game. And that's important because what happens is nothing worse than getting it, saying, hey, I thought this was going to be over here or that was going to be over here.

It's the wrong type of floor. We're involved with the customer from the beginning of the project to the end of the project, and we make sure on the shakeout side, when it's delivered, that everyone's taken care of. They understand, and their obligations to the vehicle. For example, warranty would you call where do you do it? And even in the meantime, we say after the fact, the supplier may offer service.

But in the market space, if you need to get repairs on that, we could help you find a supplier to do that as well. And we may already have suppliers readily available on contract and say, hey, you could solicit your own or if you'd like, we'll do it for you because we do assist the acquisition, which basically means you may not have to have a purchasing department or procurement shop.

We'll do it for you at a very fair and reasonable fee, and we'll do all the work for you. All we'll do is sit down and work with you with the requirements, and we'll get it going, because that's what GSA fleet does. And that's what, again, within the Federal Acquisition Services, we provide these other services. I mentioned disaster relief IT computers.

We work with our other sister organizations within FAS if somebody needs communication systems, for example, for the Department of Homeland Security, when you go to the Superbowl or you go to one of these concerts or like here in Detroit, where we had the NFL draft and took my family down there and they saw G plates on those vehicles, I said, guess what?

My agency did that, we did that. And it's really cool stuff. So there really, I think there really isn't anything that we can't really do. It's just a matter of what the mission requirement is and is, so long as it's non tactical and if it turns out to be tactical, we know the right people in the department of Defense that we could go to that customer and say, hey you better talk to DoD because we know they're the warfighter.

And if you have a tactical mission like in some of the law enforcement and kind of help them find a home in order to get the products and services they need, that's what we do.

Rob Trubia
You know, you might be a little biased when it comes to this question I'm going to ask you, but what kind of customer do you think GSA is for the automotive industry as a whole?

Leonard Fedoruk 
They really enjoy working with us. I will tell you, the government is is a demanding customer. And again, part of it is communicating. This is one thing that, you know, again, our executive leadership wants us to do. And I said, you know, you understand the government has a very unique mission here where we like to spend money with small businesses.

We're not throwing money around. We're just not sitting there, you know, pushing cash. We're working with people that know what they're doing well. We like to make sure that spenders and if we're dealing with large businesses.

We want to make sure that they comply with the subcontracting agreements, the flow down provisions of the contract. Are you given that fair share of that work to small businesses out there? And and what we refer to is, is startups, disadvantaged businesses, veteran owned, women owned, minority owned, make sure they get a piece of the pie because once that velocity of money starts spinning in the community, good things happen because, you know, they got to go to the dry cleaners, they got to go to the fast food restaurants.

And that money starts just the flow down in the community is just an amazing thing. And it's the same thing in the in the industry. So our suppliers know that, hey, when they get a government contract or they're going to at least apply in this case, you know, go through the process that there was going to be some requirements that are there.

The other thing too is they it's kind of a badge of honor for them, because a good number of the suppliers and the federal government, when they get a contract and when state and local governments go to buy and they say, we have a GSA contract, and the states know that we have a very disciplined, a very rigorous process of vetting potential suppliers.

They're like, if they're good enough for GSA, they're good enough for us. And so what happens? A good number of state governments would benchmark. So we're like, hey, wait a minute, your government entity, we'll just share that data with you. There's no secret here. It's it's all public knowledge. Now, I won't tell you some of my secret recipes are working with the team, negotiate pricing.

But hey, you know, the information is there to be shared. Why? Well, we're all paid taxes, state, federal, local level. Let's get the best value for the taxpayer. Let's get the right product and services when it comes to vehicles to meet the mission requirement. I mean, we have been honored. We've operated and supplied the fleets during the Afghan conflict.

Okay, so we're taking care of the war fighter. We have operations around the world. We're running fleet operations in Europe, the Pacific Rim. So, you know, we're in Japan, we're in South Korea, we're in South America, we're in Europe, we're in all of North America. Wherever the American government has a need for vehicle products and services, GSA fleet stands ready.

Rob Trubia
How many vehicles are you buying a year? Any idea? I mean, you must have an idea. About what? Just roughly how many.

Leonard Fedoruk 
Roughly are again, Covid, we're still kind of recovering with the industry typically are buy about 51,000. Last year we did about 40, just a little under 43,000. And again, why? Well, what we do is there's there's there's magic in that formula. Vehicles get replaced because of life cycle and duty. Okay. So there are specific regulations for a minimum replacement criterion for vehicles.

But then again, there's new mission requirements. And we do that. So roughly when you look in the grand scheme of things, GSA as a as a buyer of vehicles to the industry, we're very, very tiny. We're very, very small, but we're the United States government. And they recognize that. And they come forward and they do some amazing things for the federal government, which translates in getting the right, again, goods and services for our agency customers to do their missions to serve the American people.

So we're very well respected in the industry.

Rob Trubia
It's really obvious you love what you do.

Leonard Fedoruk 
It kinda creeps in.

Rob Trubia
Is it patriotism? Is it just this, this fire that you have the competitiveness to get the best deal for the or is it the creativity or the engineering?

Leonard Fedoruk 
It's everything. I mean, it's everything. And, you know, the thing is, I'm surrounded by an amazing team of people. I mean, I am just literally one spoke on a wheel and this whole operation, but everyone within GSA fleet, I don't care if you're on the business management side of it. I don't care if you're basically on the the other side.

Of course, our field operations people are extremely passionate because we're taking care of customers. But, I think I've always been a Car guy. I've always been a car guy. And, you know, my career spanned everything from the auto industry to, legal career insurance, everything else, you know, as far as that. But I always come back to cars and that's it.

And the big thing about it is it's really kind of cool. I mean, when I was at General Motors, I was in this side of the business, you know, you would source with suppliers and everything else. But it's there's really something amazing and humbling when you walk down the street and you see a vehicle and it's got a GSA plate on it and it's like, hey, we either bought it or we engineered it and we had it built.

That's really some pretty cool stuff and it could be anything. It's really kind of cool to go to some of these recruiting locations and seeing young recruits get out of a bus that has GSA plates on it or recruiter driving around in a very crisp uniform, and he or she gets out and it's got GSA plates and we're taking care of those individuals, it's really cool and know that if they need an ambulance at a VA hospital, that we provided it and it's reliable and it's safe and it's there, and if it needs to be fixed, we can get it repaired.

After leasing for months. And even if they don't lease from us and they own it, we could say, hey, here are a repair centers. Talk with us. Go to us, use your purchase card, but give them the business because the more government business they get, the better prices I’m going to get. And I'm all about price.

Rob Trubia
Well then let me ask you if listeners out there want to learn more about GSA fleet, where do they go?

Leonard Fedoruk 
Go to our website, which is GSA.gov. And again, you could go through the the menu that's there and you can look at all the different services and all the different units within GSA.

Rob Trubia
Well, a big thank you to Len Fedoruk for giving us an inside look at how GSA makes sure its customers get exactly the vehicle they need to meet their mission. I'd say Len made it clear that GSA fleet isn't just thinking about the future. They're driving it now with electric power leading the way. Thank you for tuning in, as always to GSA Does That, and please don't forget to subscribe to our podcast on your favorite platform and consider sharing this episode with friends and colleagues.

To suggest a topic or guest, drop us an email at gsadoesthat@gsa.gov. I'm Rob Trubia, joined by our executive producer, Mr. Max Stempora. This episode was brought to you by the General Services Administration, Office of Strategic Communication. I hope you have a great rest of your day.