Last week at the AfMA annual gala dinner and awards night, Richard Schuster was acknowledged for his service and commitment to AfMA, and the industry, after 42 years in fleet management.
Since Richard joined Telecom (now Telstra) in 1982, the role of a Fleet Manager has changed dramatically. After 24 years with Telstra, Richard joined Churches of Christ where he spent 13 years, and since 2019 he had held various roles including running TheFleetSource consultancy.
In 2017, as Group Manager Procurement, Fleet and Sustainability at Churches of Christ, Richard accepted the AfMA Fleet Environment Award.
At the time he said, “The fleet sustainability strategy is a combination of both reducing and offsetting fleet carbon emissions, as well as contributing to broader environmental outcomes across Queensland. In addition to adding electric vehicles to the fleet, we have focused on opportunities to charge those vehicles from renewable sources – predominantly solar energy.”
This recognition in 2017 completed his trifecta of AfMA awards making him the only person so far to achieve this feat.
During a brief speech, Richard reminder the audience of how much fleet management practices has changed since the eighties.
“The sorts of things that we were responsible for was taking radios out of cars,” recalled Richard. “We only gave people air conditioning if they did more than 15,000 kilometres per year. They had to qualify for air conditioning. And if you were lucky, and you did a business case, you could get an automatic transmission. I’m glad that things have progressed from there.”
“I just embrace change, and we’ve seen a lot of change at the moment. A part of me is sad to be moving on when there’s so much change, and I prefer to think of retirement as repurposing. I’m not retiring. I’m just repurposing what I’m doing in my life, and I think there might be just a little bit of fleet still to happen in that coming ahead. I want to thank the AfMA team, the people I’ve worked with over the years; suppliers and clients it’s just been a great journey.”
