Recession Busting tips for fleet operators

After payroll, vehicles are the most expensive cost to your business, and the ability for you to pro-actively reduce these costs has never been of more critical importance.

Many companies have successfully introduced initiatives to focus on vehicle cost reduction, with related reduction in carbon emissions, and have made considerable savings. At UK Fleet Manager, we constantly monitor this type of activity across the corporate fleet sector and make ‘best practice’ recommendations to all our clients.

These are our Top 5 Recession Busting tips:

1. Get a grip on fuel use – analyse cost and consumption by driver and set targets.
2. Control your servicing – you’d be amazed how many garages overcharge, so challenge them!
3. Look at tyre replacements – are they wearing out too soon, or damaged? Why?
4. Reduce vehicle ‘downtime’ – find out why your vehicles are spending time off the road.
5. Get your drivers to work smarter – are they using technology to its full potential? Train them for example, in journey planning.

UK Fleet Manager helps with practical guidance on these, and much more to make your business perform better. All it takes is a call to ask us how we do it. Contact me if you would like us to make a BIG difference to your company today. 

Mark James
Mark.james@ukfleetmanager.co.uk

Do you know the true cost of vehicle accidents to your business?

When one of your company vehicles is involved in a road traffic accident you will be faced with some immediate costs such as insurance excess and replacement vehicle hire, but have you considered the hidden costs?

These costs are more difficult to quantify but taken together, the total cost of an accident can run to thousands of £££s. Have you considered 

• The cost in time taken to process the insurance claim and deal with third parties
• Time taken to reclaim for uninsured losses
• The cost of a driver being off work through injury
• The vehicle’s ‘downtime’ and any loss of business reputation
• Potential reduced resale value on a ‘repaired’ vehicle
• The impact on your insurance premiums at the next renewal

According to industry figures, 97% of all incidents are caused by driver error, meaning that they WERE avoidable.

UK Fleet Manager can help you draw up an effective Risk Management Policy and driver development programme to help you reduce and even eliminate these costs. Contact me if you would like to know more about how we do it.

Mark James
Mark.james@ukfleetmanager.co.uk

Drivers take serious risks by not checking their tyres regularly

How often do you inspect your company car tyres? Many of you never inspect the condition of your tyres and rely solely upon the garage to check. If you rely on fitting tyre pressure sensing equipment, be aware that they cannot report on tyre defects, or irregular wear.

A recent poll of company car drivers found that the majority of drivers did not even know how to check them properly. This could have serious consequences if a tyre is damaged or under-inflated. Michelin Fleet carried out a random check of over 3000 company vehicles and discovered that almost 50% of the vehicles either had one (or more!) illegal or under-inflated tyres.

So, do you check your tyres each week? This is recommended as a formal responsibility for drivers as part of their company vehicle policy. They should check the following every week:

• Check tyre pressures are correct for the tyre size and loads being carried
• Check the tread depth by feeling the wearing bar on the tyre
• Check for uneven tread wear on the outer edges and centre of the tyre
• Check for damage to the side walls
• Don’t forget to include the spare wheel

UK Fleet Manager can help you draw up an effective Company Vehicle Policy and communicate it to everyone involved. Contact me if you would like to know more about how we do it.

Mark James
Mark.james@ukfleetmanager.co.uk

Spending valuable time dealing with vehicle problems?

Time really IS money — never has this been more important than in today’s challenging economy. You should be looking at every minute you spend working to make sure you are adding value to your business, rather than wasting valuable time dealing with unnecessary problems.

And yet I find many directors and business owners who are still dealing with day-to-day vehicle problems from their drivers. I am sure you feel that it takes your seniority and influence to get things done right. Have you dealt with:

• breakdowns
• service bookings
• chasing parts on order
• serious accidents 

However, the truth is you have more important skills, vital to running your business, and the specialized knowledge, contacts and sheer buying power possessed by a professional fleet manager is needed here.

At UK Fleet Manager, we can provide you with a unique fleet management service that takes over all these messy problems and frees up your time to get on making your business a success. We can also save you a great deal of money off your fleet costs.

There’s a win/win if ever I saw one. Contact me to see how we could make a BIG difference to your fleet costs.

Mark James

Mark.james@ukfleetmanager.co.uk

Directors run high risks by ignoring ‘Grey Fleet’

Do your employees use their private vehicles for business mileage? If so, this is your ‘Grey Fleet’ and if you don’t manage it properly you could be risking severe penalties, even imprisonment. Changes to the Health and Safety at Work Act this year mean that both drivers and management can be prosecuted for incidents involving work-related journeys, even if the driver is using their own vehicle. 

Businesses that offer cash alternatives to staff rather than company vehicles may mistakenly believe the responsibility for those private vehicles rests with the driver and not the company. To avoid the possibility of prosecution, it is essential to include these private vehicles and their drivers in the overall company vehicle policy and operation, and to pro-actively manage the situation. If you are a director or business owner I would recommend that you find out more about this. 

Some fleet specialist organisations can provide all the necessary advice and management processes required, but very few focus upon the smaller fleets. At UK Fleet Manager, we work exclusively with businesses that run less than 75 vehicles and tailor our services to assist directors in this area.  

Contact me at UK Fleet Manager and find out how easily we can help your business and make sure you don’t fall foul of the law. 

Mark James
Mark.james@ukfleetmanager.co.uk

Small Fleets are missing opportunities to save money

SME businesses paying for servicing and repairs to their vehicles are losing out on the discounts available to big fleets. This is due to their lack of bargaining power and the fear that some garages may ‘rip them off’ with inflated charges and incomplete repairs.

By using a specialist fleet management company to control all service and repair work, companies immediately benefit from lower prices by being part of a much larger fleet — plus benefiting from their technical expertise. In most cases, the fees for outsourcing this control are more than covered by the reduction in fleet costs on the bottom line.

This opportunity of belonging to a much larger fleet ‘family’ is beginning to gain acceptance with smaller businesses, but very few fleet companies specialise in this area. Our company does, and is leading the charge to meet the demands of SME businesses. We have 30 years of fleet experience at UK Fleet Manager and focus on helping companies dramatically reduce their fleet costs.

Contact me at UK Fleet Manager, no matter what size of fleet your company runs, and find out how easy it is to save money on your vehicles.

Mark James
Mark.james@ukfleetmanager.co.uk