Manage and reduce your grey fleet
In order to run your business effectively, you need to make sure you can maintain visibility and control over your drivers. For this reason, a grey fleet can be disastrous. However, with a bit of planning and forethought, you can not only make sure your fleet is running how you want, but you can potentially reduce your grey fleet usage too.
1. Measure your mileage
The first step is to understand why, how and when your drivers use their own vehicles. Sometimes it’s for convenience, sometimes they don’t know better. Start by gathering mileage data, making sure it’s clear how many miles your drivers do each trip, not overall.
2. Set minimum vehicle requirements
The BVLRA have found that most grey fleet vehicles are, on average, 8.2 years of age. To help improve emissions and efficiency, it’s a good idea to outline the minimum vehicle standards for your employees cars in areas like Euro NCAP safety ratings, age, emission levels and safety features.
3. Realistic targets
Once you have decided that you want to tackle your grey fleet, you should set achievable targets. Setting realistic and measurable goals means you, your fleet managers and your drivers can all track and monitor changes – as well as celebrate when you hit objectives.
4. Company cars
Company or lease cars are a cost-effective alternative for high-mileage grey fleet users, especially if they travel over 10,000 miles per year. Lease or company cars also enable you to distribute lower emission – and therefore cheaper to run – vehicles across your fleet. Just make sure that the lease rates and whole-life cost calculations are cost-efficient.
5. Car club
When there is a constant demand from several drivers for short journeys from the same location, a car club can be the best option. Club vehicles are usually new, so have low emission and high safety standards, while many are from rental companies, so could be hired at discount.
6. Public transport
There is a lot to be said for travelling via bus or train. Not only does it free up your people or employees to work while they are travelling, booking in advance can drastically lower prices. The viability of this option varies depending on geographical location, but if public travel is suitable, you could even see if you can develop a partnership between yourself and the train or bus company for discounts.
7. Active travel
Some employees may just need a little push to get them on their bike, while others may enjoy the idea of walking over taking their vehicle. Particularly in urban areas, encouraging your fleet to walk or cycle rather than drive can improve not only your costs, but your team’s morale. Promoting health and wellbeing, it also contributes to lowering air quality. You can even pool bikes – including electric bikes – for your employees to use, so they don’t have to worry about bringing their own in.
So whether you decide to manage your grey fleet or try switch grey vehicles out of your business, The Fuelcard Company will be able to support you with our ability to offer you consistent, discount fuel, full visibility over your spend and control over your fleet’s costs.