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Running cars and vans can be an expensive business. While poor driving can obviously put your drivers and other road users at risk, it can also cost your organisation huge amounts of money, but often in ways you didn’t realise, eating into your profits without you realising.
Our Driving for Better Business Champions manage their drivers and vehicles well so they can reduce the costs, and they share their stories to inspire other employers to do the same. Some of the obvious costs include:
Insurance Excess
Every time one of your drivers has a collision, however small, it costs your business money. Any time you have to claim against your insurance there’ll be an excess to pay, usually around £500, which takes money directly out of your cashflow and profits.
Increased Insurance Premium
A few too many of these incidents and your annual insurance premium could start to rise dramatically. Businesses with a poor driving record can end up paying hundreds, even thousands of pounds more than they should for each vehicle, EVERY YEAR.
Leasing Penalties
Even if you haven’t claimed on your insurance, you might be paying for the damage in other ways. Do you see the bills when your vehicles go back to the leasing company? A kerbed wheel or a scuffed bumper can mean a bill for hundreds in repairs. Add another kerbed wheel and maybe a dented wing and you’re into thousands!
Reduced Resale Value
If you buy your cars or vans outright, then the reduced resale value of a poorly cared for vehicle means more money is needed for a replacement.
Case Study: Hertfordshire Independent Living Services
HILS provides meals-on-wheels and caring support for people in Hertfordshire with a current fleet of 68 cars. Managers implemented a new driving policy, communicated via a driver safety handbook, which included daily vehicle checks with step-by-step guidance, banning the use of mobile phones whilst driving, and requiring any incidents or vehicle damage to be reported immediately.
HILS also installed telematics in their vehicles to monitor vehicle location and driver behaviour. Adding telemetry to the company vehicles has also improved customer service. If a client calls wanting to know how long before the driver arrives, HILS can tell them exactly where the driver is and how long they'll be.
Over 18 months, the fleet grew from 37 to 68 vehicles yet the number of collisions came down by almost 50%. As a result of this success, their annual fleet insurance premium was reduced by over 26% in just 1 year. Reduced damage has also resulted in higher end-of-life values for the vehicles when they are de-fleeted.
