Penske’s Next-Generation AI Platform Gives Insights Down to Vehicle Level – Fleet Management

Penske Truck Leasing unveiled the next generation of its Catalyst AI artificial intelligence fleet management platform. The updated version adds more granular insights to the fleet-level visibility and benchmarking in the original platform.

Built specifically for commercial transportation, Catalyst AI applies machine learning (a type of AI) to turn its rich vehicle data sets into faster, more strategic decision-making for trucking companies.

Catalyst AI was built to meet a fundamental need in modern operations: how to take the right action, at the right time, from the right data. It now offers granular insights that allow real-time benchmarking and diagnostics at the individual vehicle and hub level.

The update introduces four core enhancements designed to make that possible:

• Fantasy Fleet: Offers a new comparison set made up of top-performing vehicles most similar to each vehicle in the user’s fleet, helping them find gaps and elevate performance.
• Vehicle-level Comparison: Enables users to compare individual vehicles to pinpoint performance differences, helping identify where targeted adjustments can drive better results.
• Hub-level Comparison: Allows users to assess operations by location and uncover opportunities for improved efficiency at the local level.
• Impacting Metrics: Gives users the ability to focus on specific metrics that matter most to their business, such as fuel efficiency, maintenance costs, and utilization.

“We’ve enhanced the platform’s ability to surface trends, benchmark at the vehicle level, and identify meaningful outliers across fleets and facilities,” said Art Vallely, president of Penske Truck Leasing. “Built in-house, the platform was designed to help our customers spend less time chasing data and more time improving performance.”

Catalyst AI is embedded within Comparative Insights, a feature of Penske’s Fleet Insight digital platform. While fleet-level insights remain free to customers, new Comparative Insights Premium unlocks deeper comparisons and access to the new Fantasy Fleet, available with a 30-day free trial.

The Technology Behind the Intelligence

Since Catalyst AI launched in 2024, the platform has grown to support thousands of users.

“Catalyst AI now analyzes over 100 billion data points annually,” said Tim Haynes, vice president of digital and customer data at Penske. 

“We’ve engineered a system that runs more than 300 models in real time, delivering comparison logic, trend detection, and scoring that is both scalable and immediate. This release reflects the technical backbone required to help fleets benchmark smarter and respond faster.”

“Catalyst AI gives fleet managers the data they need at their fingertips to run the operation and know exactly where they stand,” said Brian Harper, fleet operations leader at Darigold, an early adopter of the platform. “It lets us see how we’re performing against the market in real-time.

“The data surfaced through Catalyst AI has already supported internal reporting and opened opportunities to reduce costs and reevaluate how we measure success.”