Data on how many people are required to manage a fleet has been revealed by Association of Fleet Professionals (AFP) research.
The organisation surveyed 118 organisations which together manage 118,000 vehicles.
For fleets with more than 1,000 vehicles, the average number of full-time fleet employees was found to be 5.25 for externally funded fleets and 12.25 for outright purchased fleets.
For fleets of 500-1,000 vehicles, the respective figures were 3.55 and 8.25; for fleets of 100-500 vehicles 1.32 and 1.75; and for fleets of 100 vehicles or less 0.83 and 1.00.
AFP vice chair Lorna McAtear said: “As fleet managers struggle with increased workloads and managing resources, how many people should be managing a fleet is a question that comes up time and time again amongst AFP members and the information we have compiled indicates why it is so difficult to answer.
“For example, if you look at the responses we have received, fleets with two FTEs in the fleet team range in size from 633 vehicles to 5,300, which is a considerable difference. However, there are good reasons for this variance, with the biggest fleet having a large number of cash allowance drivers.
“There are many other instances of this kind of diversity in our research, serving to illustrate both the significant value of this new data but at the same time, underlining the difficulty of using it to produce useable benchmarking figures.”
The AFP said its averages had been created by applying a weighting to different fleet types: salary sacrifice, cash allowance, company car, LCV, and HGV.
McAtear said: “It’s important to stress these results are very much a reflection of the 118 fleets who responded to our survey but the figures appear to us to feel broadly representative.
“Generally, fleets within the AFP that depart significantly from most of these averages have their own particular demands and requirements.”
