TMC goes viral to promote benefits of actual cost fuel expenses

TMC has launched a campaign to draw the attention of fleets to the drawbacks of traditional fleet fuel expenses.

The campaign includes a 90-second video and a new white paper on using actual cost expenses to reduce costs.

The message, says TMC managing director Paul Jackson, is that pay-and-reclaim expenses and flat-rate mileage payments are barely fit for purpose in today’s volatile price environment.

“Flat rates hide the real cost of fuel,” said Jackson. “In fact they are a black hole for management information. They actively hinder fleets’ efforts to manage their fuel bills at a time of huge price volatility.”

TMC calculates that a 500-car fleet might pay between £30,000 and £70,000 a year too much for fuel if it uses the HMRC Advisory Fuel Rates (AFRs). The total bill for UK fleets is likely to run to hundreds of millions of pounds a year.

“In today’s market and with today’s technology, no-one would have invented a process with as many shortcomings as pay-and reclaim,” said Jackson. “It’s now just as easy to pay precise expenses with the help of low-cost solutions such as online mileage capture.

“Actual cost also delivers huge spin-off benefits in terms of visibility over fuel spend, vehicle performance and driver productivity.”

The new white paper covers capturing real-world cost data using online mileage reporting, fuel cards and/or scanned receipts. It describes using web-based solutions such as TMC Mileage Audit to capture data and process fuel expenses automatically.