Book Extract

'This book is written for fleet managers, that is, people who manage business vehicles.

‘Fleet manager’ may not be your job title. You may be an accountant, company secretary, purchasing manager, human resource manager or transport manager, or you may work in a department run by one of these people. You may be a managing director, finance director, commercial director, HR director or operations director or indeed hold any one of a wide range of board positions.

If you are responsible for some aspect of running your company’s vehicle fleet – purchasing cars, approving and paying maintenance invoices, selling cars, arranging finance, dealing with a contract hire company, obtaining finance quotes, renewing motor insurance, or, indeed, anything whatsoever to do with company vehicles - this book is for you.

The book covers company cars, vans and light commercial vehicles weighing up to 3.5 tonnes. It excludes heavy goods vehicles above this weight because different operational and licensing rules apply to these vehicles. However, many of the principles in this book will apply to heavier vehicles too.

There is a section on how car leasing and contract hire companies run their businesses, to give you an insight into the issues that affect these companies and perhaps to explain why they do some of the things they do.

If you are responsible for a car fleet and you are new to fleet management, don’t worry, you are not alone. There are over a million businesses running fewer than five vehicles, 50,000 running 5-25 vehicles, 10,000 running 26-100 vehicles and 5,000 running over 100 vehicles. By and large the issues confronting managers of large fleets are the same as the issues that you will have to deal with. The difference is just a matter of scale. There is a great deal of help available to you; from organisations, magazines, publications, professional advisers and consultants. '