Shina Salako
The practitioner's blog

Writing from inside the operating discipline of fleet management.

Long-form practitioner notes on telematics, fleet operations, and the embedded service model. One post per fortnight after launch. Written from the seat the author has worked in for fifteen years.

All posts.

REPLACE · Post 1

The five fleet management mistakes that cost Nigerian cargo-owners the most money.

The five mistakes that show up in nearly every fleet management programme that fails to produce the outcomes its sponsor expected.

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REPLACE · Post 2

How to calculate the real ROI of a fleet management programme.

The formula, the cost side, the benefit side, and a worked example using real numbers from a cargo-owner engagement. The framework from Chapter 19, applied step by step.

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REPLACE · Post 3

The five-stage fleet maturity model — where most operations actually sit.

Tracking, monitoring, discipline, optimisation, strategic asset. The honest distribution across cargo-owner organisations in West Africa today — and what moves an operation up a stage.

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Coming · Post 4

What a working control tower actually looks like in 2026.

The morning routine, the three operating surfaces, and the discipline that turns visibility into operating decisions.

Coming soon
Coming · Post 5

Why most telematics implementations fail in West African fleets.

The hardware shortcut, the connectivity shortcut, the master-data shortcut — and why each one quietly invalidates every report above it.

Coming soon
Coming · Post 6

Driver behaviour scoring that actually changes driver behaviour.

What makes a scorecard land in the depot, and what makes it sit in a folder no one opens.

Coming soon
Coming · Post 7

The fuel report your accounts team is not reading — and why.

Three formats that travel inside cargo-owner organisations, and one that does not.

Coming soon
Coming · Post 8

Vendor governance for cargo-owners managing third-party transporters.

The scorecard, the monthly review, and the conversation that is from evidence rather than from frustration.

Coming soon
Coming · Post 9

Incident response when the operating data sits with you, not the transporter.

The advantage of holding the data, the responsibility that comes with it, and the protocol that turns an incident into a learning.

Coming soon
Coming · Post 10

Cost-per-kilometre and the freight-rate model your transporter is using.

How freight-rate-per-km and variable cost actually work — for the cargo-owner and the transporter on opposite sides of the same negotiation.

Coming soon
Coming · Post 11

Building a fleet management programme from scratch — the first 90 days.

The order of operations, the people decisions, and the work product the first quarter is meant to produce.

Coming soon
Coming · Post 12

From device installer to embedded service — twelve years inside Guinness Nigeria.

The arc of the engagement, the moments where the operating model held, and what we have learned about how a long service relationship matures.

Coming soon
The quarterly note

One substantive note per quarter. From a practitioner. To another practitioner.

The blog runs on its own cadence. The quarterly note is different — one longer reflection per quarter, written for senior fleet leaders, on a single operating question that matters more than the others did that quarter.

It is the same list that delivers the First Look. Subscribers receive the note four times a year, no more, with a one-click unsubscribe in every one.