C F Roberts, providers of electrical and mechanical services to the construction industry, has selected Fleet Alliance to help manage its mixed fleet of 140 vehicles.

The company operates a mix of cars and vans, primarily for engineers and maintenance staff. The vans, which make up around two thirds of the fleet, are Ford Transit Custom and Connect models for engineers, while the cars are a mixture of mainly Volkswagen Golf and Mercedes C-Class models for contract managers.

Both vehicle classes are contract hired for three year/90,000 miles which C F Roberts, based on previous experience, finds to be the most cost-effective replacement cycle.

Following its appointment, Fleet Alliance has now introduced competitive tendering for each new model added to the fleet, replacing C F Robert’s previous supplier with a panel of funders to quote for each new vehicle and then selecting the most cost-effective on behalf of the client.

Competitive tendering used in this way has been shown to to produce savings of 8-10% in terms of acquisition costs, and Fleet Alliance estimates it will save a six-figure sum on behalf of the client as a result of employing this methodology over the three-year life of the vehicle contracts.

All of the C F Roberts fleet is now being managed through Fleet Alliance’s online fleet management system, e-fleet, which offers an extensive and comprehensive suite of reports and allows the interrogation of any aspect of the fleet operation.

The e-fleet platform has the scalability, capacity and flexibility to handle the administration of fleets from five cars to more than 5,000, and is accessible from anywhere in the world 24 hours a day.

C F Roberts Group Finance Director, Matthew Thompson, said that the alerts generated by the system had been its most useful single feature, while its general all-round functionality allowed him and his staff to manage the whole fleet internally between them.

“We were previously using spreadsheets to manage our fleet but we found these error-prone and too easily corrupted,” he said.

“By switching the fleet onto the e-fleet platform, we can now provide an accurate record of all vehicles on the fleet, their mileages, service intervals and driver details. The alerts are extremely useful as they tell us when a vehicle is approaching its contract mileage or when services are due.

“We find the e-fleet system brilliant to use and it is proving to be a proper database solution with a complete suite of management information reports that allow us to dig deeper into any aspect of the fleet,” he said.

“We have also found that the customer service from Fleet Alliance has been first rate and we have two dedicated account managers who are very receptive to our needs and happy to make any changes or amendments, should we require them” he added.

Fleet Alliance managing director Martin Brown said: “Naturally, we are delighted to have been selected by C F Roberts to provide fleet management services for their fleet.  We are confident that, by employing competitive tendering for all new vehicles, we can deliver acquisition cost efficiencies, while the e-fleet platform will allow the more accurate and error-free management of the fleet."

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