More than half of customers (57%) surveyed by Grosvenor Leasing felt that grey fleet management was either 'unimportant' or 'very unimportant' despite the risks associated with employees using their own cars for business.
The survey of more than 100 customers found 37% remained impartial to the benefits of the service, while only 17.3% saw the value of risk management with 52% rating it as either ‘unimportant’ or ‘very unimportant’.
Other results found 93% of companies that use a contract hire or fleet management provider to assist with the running of their fleet deem it as vital for their business, yet only 6% feel they need help with their grey fleet.
Beyond contract hire and fleet management of cars, the most in-demand services for companies, in order of priority, are online fleet management reporting, with 57.4% rating this as either ‘important’ or ‘very important’, daily rental (47%), easi-Lease, for hires over 28 days (44%), online driving licence checks (40.4%), direct day-to-day contact with drivers (39.6%), accident management (35.8%) and fuel cards (18.5%).
Mary Dopson, Grosvenor Leasing’s customer services director, said: "Our survey drew opinion from a broad cross section of our clients.
“Those who responded run vehicle fleets ranging from just a few cars and vans up to many hundreds, making this a strong reflection of business needs.
“Most interesting is the lack of interest in grey fleet and risk management because, without proper measures in place, these are areas that could leave a company very exposed if a driver has a serious accident.
“They are also both areas where a lot of money can be saved and, rather than being viewed as an expense to the business, should be seen as offering a strong return on investment.”
Alastair kendrick - 17/05/2017 15:56
Whilst this is worrying I think there needs to be a debate on what is the grey fleet? Seeing some of the numbers being produced for the population of the grey fleet makes me think some are including any employee who does not have a company car and does some business travel. Clearly many of that population may over the course of the year do negligible business travel. These occasional users are in a different league to those employees who are essential car users but drive their own car on business. I clearly accept that there needs to be controls in place and checks for those who are using their own car on an essential basis is it necessary though to have those same controls fit someone doing say less than 1,000 business miles a year possibly no. You need a risk assessment