Pennsylvania-based Penske Truck Leasing has applied machine learning to its Catalyst AI proprietary artificial intelligence engine platform to redefine fleet management.

Built for commercial transportation, Catalyst AI now has machine learning to turn rich vehicle data sets into faster, more strategic decision-making across operations.

Catalyst AI was built to meet the need in modern operations for taking the right action at the right time from the right data. The update introduces four enhancements to make that possible:

• Fantasy fleet: Offers a 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 – fuel efficiency, maintenance costs, utilisation and more.

“The new release marks a next chapter for Catalyst AI, one that makes complex data more usable, more scalable and more actionable,” said Art Vallely, president of Penske Truck Leasing. “We’ve enhanced the platform’s ability to surface trends, benchmark at the vehicle level, and identify meaningful outliers across fleets and facilities. Built in-house, the platform was designed to help our customers spend less time chasing data and more time improving performance.”

Catalyst AI continues to evolve in step with the complexities of modern fleet operations, delivering faster insights, clearer benchmarks and intelligence designed to keep businesses ahead. Penske says it reflects what today’s fleet professionals need: trusted insights that drive action.

That demand is reflected in Penske’s 2025 transportation leaders survey, which found that 93% of senior business decision makers in the transportation and logistics industry agree that AI will improve their organisation’s resiliency and ability to adapt to sudden shifts. More than half (54%) said the ability to compare their fleet’s performance to others in the same market would improve efficiency and operational decision-making. As they plan for continued economic uncertainty, fleet leaders cited their most critical data needs as visibility into maintenance costs (44%), fuel price trends (41%) and fleet utilisation (36%).

Organisations that have embraced AI are already reaping the benefits with 40% of respondents using AI tools saying they’ve seen improvements of at least 50% in fuel usage, cost reduction or distance travelled through smarter routing and optimisation. However, 84% of transportation leaders think the industry is lagging behind in AI adoption and 36% only feel somewhat prepared to respond to ongoing supply chain disruptions and economic volatility. This signals a growing urgency for tools that not only provide data but translate them into tangible actions that drive outcomes, such as lowering operating costs and increasing efficiency.

“We’ve designed Catalyst AI with our customers’ needs in mind,” said Sherry Sanger, executive vice president at Penske Transportation. “Catalyst AI represents a strategic leap forward in how fleets use data. It’s not just about visibility, it’s about empowering smarter decisions across the entire network with technology that works in the real world.”

Since Catalyst AI launched in 2024, the platform has grown to support thousands of users, helping fleet professionals move from lagging metrics to leading decisions. The platform is now a foundational part of how teams across Penske’s network report, benchmark and plan across vehicles, locations and systems.

“Catalyst AI now analyses over 100 billion data points annually,” said Tim Haynes, vice president 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 (penskecatalyst.ai) is embedded within Comparative Insights, a feature inside the Fleet Insight digital platform. Comparative Insights, powered by Catalyst AI, at the fleet level remains available at no cost to Penske customers. The Comparative Insights Premium Plan unlocks access to vehicle- and hub-level comparisons and the Fantasy Fleet feature, with a 30-day free trial available before subscription.

Penske Truck Leasing (PenskeTruckLeasing.com) is headquartered in Reading, Pennsylvania. Penske operates and maintains more than 419,000 vehicles and serves its customers from more than 990 maintenance facilities and more than 2200 rental locations across North America.