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Depending on your age and job title, the answer to the question, "What is big, grey and tends to go unnoticed until it suddenly becomes a headache?" is possibly either "a secretive elephant with a mallet" or "grey fleet vehicles" - private cars used on business...
Depending on your age and job title, the answer to the question, "What is big, grey and tends to go unnoticed until it suddenly becomes a headache?" is possibly either "a secretive elephant with a mallet" or "grey fleet vehicles" - private cars used on business.
It's a sign of the times that an expression that was rarely heard until recently is now widely bandied about in industry and Government circles. Visiting the BusinessCar website earlier this week, I noticed that "grey fleet" was attracting twice as many votes as "the environment" in a poll about upcoming issues for fleet managers.
Whenever an issue begins to grab wider attention, it's wise to question if there actually is an underlying problem or whether it's just a short-lived diversion from real day-to-day business.
This time, I think that the BusinessCar pollsters have got it right. If grey fleet is a only storm in a teacup, it's a very big teacup - big enough to hold up to five million grey drivers, covering billions of business miles every year.
And there is a growing pile of evidence to suggest why grey fleet has become a hot topic.
A recent study for public sector organisations found that the average age of an employee-owned car used on business was 6.7 years, compared with less than two years for a leased vehicle and six months for a daily rental car. Older cars clearly score less highly on safety and CO2 emissions than newer ones.
Another study of vehicles used on business found that 18% were unroadworthy, 12% were not properly insured and 2% of drivers had invalid licences.
Increasing use of carbon taxes, plus moves to coordinate workplace road safety guidelines with Police procedures and the new corporate killing law are encouraging employers to bring their grey drivers in from the cold.
This topic lends itself to a mixed palette of phrases, so forgive me for suggesting that this White Paper by OGCS - the public sector central purchasing agency - might be a good place to start building a business case and plan for tackling the grey issue.
It reckons that the public sector, which runs 300,000 managed vehicles but whose employees clock up billions of grey miles in their own cars, can save millions of pounds a year by reducing its dependence on private cars.
The same undoubtedly goes for the private sector, where the gauntlet also lies squarely at the feet of fleet suppliers, since no-one seriously believes that non-car alternatives like public transport or teleconferencing can solve the problem.
Customers should be able to turn to their service providers for help in steering a path around the pitfalls (or should that be elephant traps?) of dealing with grey fleet driving.
The good news is that new products and new thinking from well-positioned suppliers are already delivering flexible, cost-effective alternatives to the blunt choice of cash-or-car - and the threat of increased risks, higher carbon emissions and hidden costs when employees take the cash option.
BusinessCar magazine ©2019
Business Car Magazine © 2020 | Business Car is part of NS Media Group.
