Gary Black is a fleet manager in the traditional sense of the word.

Virtually everything is handled in-house and Gary spends 100% of his time running Inspired Gaming’s fleet

“This is very much my fleet,” he says.

“I’m not over-seeing a contract hire arrangement.

"That was my argument to the judges of the Fleet News awards – I’m a hands-on fleet manager. I’m not just administering the fleet – I’m actually managing it.

“I source the vehicles, I do the deal on the levels of support we get, then throughout the life of those vehicles I manage them and all the maintenance is done in-house.

I do so much to try to improve the fleet and last year I felt I couldn’t have done more.”

It was a successful argument. Gary scooped the Fleet Manager of the Year award in the 401-plus category.

At the time of winning, the Inspired Gaming fleet comprised around 1,400 vehicles, spread over 18 depots nationwide. All the work is carried out by him and his colleague Emily Prescott.

“I’ve been here 14 years and I’ve been absolutely dedicated to running this fleet as efficiently and safely as possible,” says Gary.

“It doesn’t stop at 5 o’clock and even when I’m not here I’m on the laptop and everyone has my mobile number. Emily works hard too – I can’t say enough about the support I get from her.”

Gary’s dedication is mixed with a broad knowledge of the industry.

“I’ve been in the motor industry since I left school, originally within dealerships.

Then I went into a fleet management company and eventually came into this business, looking after an individual fleet, so I’ve seen both sides of the fence.”

KPIs

One of the factors in running the fleet successfully has been key performance indicators (KPIs).

Gary uses them to measure own- fault accidents, whether accident debrief forms have been filled in, whether hire or loan cars have been included in the insurance database and the return of private mileage declaration forms.

“KPIs have had a massive impact,” he says.

“Nobody gets punished but the depot managers have a monthly meeting where they are shown a league table. If I say: ‘Wolverhampton you’re bottom’, they don’t like it. It’s a good incentive.

“It’s all very well having policies, but how do you enforce them? How do you measure if anything is happening?”

Since 2005 the fleet’s accident rate has fallen dramatically, from 409 own-fault accidents to just 62.

“That’s with no driver training, and with the same size fleet,” says Gary.

“We’ve looked at driver training, but the trouble is that we have a high turnover of staff. We don’t want to spend a lot of money on driver training for people who then go and work elsewhere.”

Gary began tackling accidents with a series of presentations, entitled ‘Project Prang’.

“It made drivers aware of the dangers – the numbers getting killed or injured – and then we showed them how much our insurance policy cost.

"People had no idea we were third party and that it cost us £834,000.”

The next step was to introduce an accident debrief form.

“It means the driver doesn’t think that an accident doesn’t matter and they can just get the vehicle repaired,” Gary explains.

“They know they have to go through an interview with their manager, who fills in the debrief form.

They’re asked questions like: ‘What do you consider were the reasons for the accident?’ We hope it acts as a deterrent to own-fault accidents.”

Fuel reductions

Getting drivers to buy fuel from supermarkets was another achievement.

“We knew that if we could get them using supermarkets we’d be pulling our costs down. At
the time, our fuel spend was £3 million.

"We started off saying we wanted 60% of our fuel to be bought through supermarkets. We achieved that quite rapidly.

"Then we upped the ante to 80%. Consistently, we now get 83%.”

Like accident management, this was achieved by ‘naming and shaming’ depots.

“We made it clear – it’s your depot that’s letting this percentage down.”

Gary also worked on ‘greening’ the fleet, revising the vehicle choice list by removing conventional petrol-powered vehicles and high CO2-emission vehicles, and introducing financial incentives to encourage people to choose greener cars.

The fleet also underwent a review with the Energy Saving Trust in 2007.

But behind the achievements is the fact that Gary cares about the fleet. “It’s not just a job. I’m passionate about this fleet and I think that’s the key.”