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But the three bigger initiatives in terms of developing new projects have been the Business Critical scheme, a development Porter calls "mega fleet", and the establishing of a new site in Coventry to sell the cream of Lex's defleeted cars.
Business Critical, launched in September, is a programme aimed at the likes of utilities companies that are subject to regulatory performance targets and fines for not, for example, fixing broken power lines in a certain timeframe.
The development was a driving force behind Lex Autolease winning the £100m contract to supply and manage Balfour Beatty's 6000-vehicle fleet. "Fleets like this haven't been keen to outsource, because they couldn't be confident about the service back-up," explains Porter. "Front of mind is tyres because as soon as you get into these vehicles that are doing unusual things, if you run them in a standard way then for the specialist ones you won't have the right tyre."
Lex's boss also claims the firm wouldn't have been able to win the Balfour Beatty business, and that of a couple of other customers, without spending money on the 'mega-fleet' scheme, launched 18 months ago to effectively treat the biggest customers as a sub-section of the business. This involves in investing up to the level of customising IT systems so fleets can specify their vehicles in the working platform they are familiar with. Mega-fleet dovetails with the new Business Critical programme, as the larger fleets Lex is targeting tend to run a number of non-standard vehicles.
The light commercial vehicle area is another where Lex has been active, launching its Driveaway Solutions range of ready-to-go LCVs, pre-fitted with the conversions required by trades such as plumbers, construction workers or electricians, although the result hasn't been quite what Lex expected. "It's proven really beneficial for us," explains Porter. "It's not led to the sale of many conversions, but has raised interest in the potential to convert a van.
"Customers wouldn't have known before they picked up the phone that leasing companies do bespoke conversions of vehicles," he continues. "We've done a lot of new business but not necessarily on the design we thought it would be."
Predictably, Porter has no worries about Lex Autoloease becoming too big. I'm most interested in what is
the benefit of us being big to customers, and if we can leverage our size to the benefit of customers then that feels like good business practice," he says. "It's important to provide something for customers at better value or service than they can get elsewhere.
"We're well-placed for larger fleets, we've got the ability to take on larger customers, and we have
the right infrastructure to do what some companies can't do," he concludes. "We're doing things
better than the competition so we're increasing our share."
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