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Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Fleet Management: Managing Your Grey Fleet

By Julia Stiles


The term 'grey fleet' refers to the use of employees' personal vehicles for company business. Fleet management is needed to create procedures, terms and policies to control the use of workers cars for labour related activities.

The fleet management plan should also track the physical conditions of the grey fleet vehicles. The management system should be used to schedule maintenance services, including determining wear and tear, of each vehicle in the fleet.

Some of the companies that use this type of fleet are organisations whose workers do not often go on work-related trips. Grey fleet is a cost-saving alternative to renting or buying cars just for business-related excursions, particularly if the need for such travel is sporadic. For many of these businesses, this is the way to go; but for others it isn't. Here are several points that should be carefully considered before choosing to go with the grey fleet alternative instead of buying or renting, but the grey fleet must be correctly set up and handled. For some, the cost can definitely be a lot lower than other available options.

Some people believe that companies only pay for mileage when running a grey fleet, and that companies are not responsible for the employees after they are in their personal cars. This is incorrect as the corporation in most cases is not only liable for the workers when they are using their own vehicles for company business, but they also have to put these cars on their insurance plans as if the company actually owned them.

Either fleet managers or fleet management software should ultimately be responsible for the fleet. A fleet manager who will be responsible for running everything related to the grey fleet might be enough for smaller operations, as in the majority cases good use of Microsoft Excel is suited for the organisation of all fleet information. If the operation is bigger, however, fleet management software will be fundamental to collecting all of information associated with workers' cars. Various issues do exist and should be examined and analysed when choosing whether your company should use this type of fleet.




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