John Flynn: "the trickiest thing in this business is that most people operating fleets like this tend to act from experience, … without any empirical data. We have the data."

South Florida CEO, May, 2004

The Player: John J. Flynn. 56, CEO and president of Fort Lauderdale-based First Fleet Corporation

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Latest Play: Sold First Fleet to PHH Arval, a division of Cendant Corporation which manages car and light-truck rental fleets; he will stay on to run the company as an independent operation.

Background: Founded First Fleet in 1989. The company manages tractor-trailer and other heavy-duty truck fleets for large corporations, using 12 billion miles of on-road data to improve fleet efficiency--from changing driver behaviors to increasing gas mileage to deciding when to sell a truck. Cendant saw the acquisition of First Fleet as a way to expand the market served by PHH, and to acquire First Fleet's information technology.

Ambition: Because First Fleet owns the trucks it manages (it leases them out to clients), the business is capital-intensive, and becoming part of Cendant means access to more, and cheaper, capital. Flynn plans to expand into smaller vehicles, growing his customer base from Fortune 100 companies to Fortune 1000 companies. He anticipates 2004 revenues of around $175 million, and after that, "we are predicted to double our revenue in the next 18 months," he says.