SYMPOSIUM SOUNDBITES: JASON FRANCISCO, FAAC

Interview edited for brevity.

The recent CALSTART Member Symposium in Seattle was yet another triumph of collaboration, insight, and accelerating the growth of the clean transportation industry. It wouldn’t have been possible without our sponsors, whose partnership and support were instrumental in making this gathering of industry leaders a success.

One of those sponsors is FAAC Incorporated from Ann Arbor, Michigan. FAAC has set the industry standard for immersive simulation training, but you can also find their technology onboard state-of-the-art aircraft, in academic research labs, and in many other contexts.

So what does this have to do with clean transportation? Jared Schnader, VP of CALSTART’s Bus Initiative, sat down recently to chat with Jason Francisco, Transportation Business Manager at FAAC to discuss training solutions for trucks, our mission to drive sustainable transportation forward, and where the two intersect.

Read on below for our member Q&A 

Jared Schnader: As a sponsor of our Member Symposium, how has your involvement with our organization strengthened FAAC’s mission to enhance safety and efficiency in transportation?

Jason Franscisco: Our customers are safety conscious. They see the operations of a commercial vehicle through a safety lens, so we adopt that as well. No matter what technology we’re introducing, we’re still navigating on public roads and highways, and we always have the motoring public around us. For me, it reaffirms that drivers aren’t going anywhere. Safe commercial vehicle operations will always be a target for fleets. 

JS: What does being a member of CALSTART mean to you personally?

JF: If you’re in transportation you should be in this organization. Regardless of the side you’re on, the infrastructure side, the utility side. CALSTART helps me appreciate all the angles.

For me, CALSTART means showing up and being a part of the conversation. It means engaging with industry, hearing their pain points. When we look at CALSTART’s mission to help a larger network do their jobs better, I realize that’s where we fall, too. We want that same thing. It’s a good alignment. 

JS: Was there a standout interaction or session from the Member Symposium for you? 

JF: We want to have good timing with customers. Timing is a critical underlying feature. Two sessions stood out to me: the transit innovation session shed a lot of light on how much transit agencies are doing and how much these agencies have led innovation. Mike Hynes was able to have a really strong conversation around this. What can they tell us about other heavy duty clean transportation solutions?

Second for me was Jennie Abarca’s session on drayage. She’s very excited, her fleet’s going to be all electric at some point, but she still drove home that logistics is about A to B — a movement of goods and services. How that happens is fine by the hauling company, but there’s a clean transportation angle that needs to be championed.

“For us, by nature of what we do, we’re uniquely positioned to be innovative.” 

JS: Looking ahead, what’s one trend in transportation — whether in technology, policy, or culture — that you think CALSTART members should be paying attention to?

JF: I look at the impact of technology on culture, and vice versa. Workplace culture is a living thing, it’s dynamic. Some cultures are “wait-and-see,” and some cultures say “we want to be early adopters, give us all the technology, we want to be at the forefront of the conversation.”

For us, by nature of what we do, we’re uniquely positioned to be innovative. We’re always thinking about how we can do things better, what new technologies we can introduce. But now we have to think about how technology impacts the culture. Your staff can have a disposition that leadership doesn’t — they’re the ones that have to adopt and use these tools, the new technologies.

So staying in beat with culture and technology adoption, and how one impacts the other. 

JS: What’s one bold idea you’d love to see the industry embrace, even if it feels out of reach right now? 

JF: It’s bold but it’s simple: more training and the right training. Not just what we think of as “training,” but a real partnership. Structured employee development programs have been around a long time, but it’s still difficult to develop the right kind of mentorship.

Retaining employees is difficult right now. I think providing training or those touchpoints throughout — probably for the first couple of years — is critical to creating a loyal employee, and showing them the value of the upward trajectory. It has to stretch way beyond initial training.