Cancer Research UK has outsourced the management of its mixed car and van fleet to Fleet Hire.

The charity runs a mixed car and van fleet of around 225 vehicles, plus a further 60 cash allowance drivers and up to 100 occasional business drivers, on a national basis with large numbers of high mileage drivers.

Following a detailed review and recognizing that fleet management was not a core competence, Cancer Research UK took the decision to bring in a fleet management specialist to run its fleet more efficiently, with a greater degree of professionalism and reduce the admin burden. After a detailed tender progress that involved fleet management specialists of all sizes, the charity appointed Fleet hire, based in Solihull.

“We took the decision to appoint Fleet Hire because we felt that they understood the complex requirements from all our fundraising activities. We are not a regular 9.00 to 5.00 fleet but often work right through the night.

“We felt that Fleet Hire would respect our fleet and our brand and provide us with the very high level of service we require – and that has certainly proved to be the case,” said Roger Wright, central operations manager for trading at Cancer Research UK.

Cancer Research UK now operates a single badge policy for its car fleet, having recently switched to Peugeot, and a single badge policy for its van fleet with Vauxhall. All vehicles are on three or four year contract hire deals for 60,000 or 80,000 miles per annum.

Fleet Hire also manages all in-life services for the fleet including accident management, fines management, vehicle downtime management, pool fleet allocation, end of contract charges and vehicle storage. Management information reporting across all aspects of the fleet has been greatly improved so that Cancer Research UK now has a clearer and more detailed overview of the fleet.

Particular emphasis has also been paid to the management of the grey fleet with regular vehicle condition reports, driver licence checks, mileage capture and re-written fleet policies for both company and grey fleet drivers.
Cancer Research UK is currently involved in a driver development programme for all types of drivers on its fleet with an online risk assessment followed by ten training modules for all drivers to ensure it meets all its duty of care responsibilities.

“What they are very good at is providing opinion and advice on policy and procedures to ensure we are in line with the latest best practice thinking, as well identifying key issues and bringing them to us, so that we can make our drivers and relevant managers aware of them.

“This has typically been around issues such as mobile phones, for example, and we now have a robust mobile phone policy in place. They have been instrumental in bringing greater professionalism, improved clarity over costs and a better service for our drivers, so that overall our fleet is run much more efficiently,” he said.

Nick Poole, sales director at Fleet Hire said: “We are delighted to be working with Cancer Research UK to help reduce the administrative burden in running the charity’s vehicle fleet.

“By the introduction of a series of best practice fleet initiatives, we have been able to ensure that the Cancer Research UK fleet is now run in a far more efficient, cost effective and controlled manner, and that they are in a better position to concentrate on carrying out the vital work that they do.”

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