Sales and retail marketing company REL Field Marketing has reduced its accident rate by 29% over the past five years thanks to a combination of educating drivers and a tough stance on at-fault accidents.

The reduction has been achieved despite the fleet growing from 70 cars, when procurement manager David Millar joined the company in 2010, to 220 today.

The fleet expanded due to REL taking on a number of bigger clients, including Mondelez, Cadbury, News UK (formerly News International) and Molson Coors.

REL recognised the need for more fleet resource and appointed a fleet supervisor, Kerryn Sullivan, and a fleet co-ordinator, Kelly Mullan, to work alongside Millar, who spends 50% of his time on fleet and the rest on other procurement, such as insurance, stationery and hotels.

Millar says his approach to fleet management is “education, education, education”.

Every driver that joins REL has a 45-minute induction with the fleet team, which includes a road safety video from RoSPA. This is followed up with fleet presentations at client national sales meetings and, over the past year, messages sent out to drivers through social media site Yammer (dubbed ‘Facebook for business’).

It takes a ‘stick approach’ to at-fault accidents.

“We have a reasonably brutal policy on contributing to the excess of the accident,” Millar says. “In 2010, the excess was £1,000, which a driver paid in four monthly increments of 25% for an at-fault incident.

 “As our accident rate and insurance premiums improved year-on-year it allowed us to reduce our policy excess to £750.

 “Just last year, in recognition of drivers’ contribution to safer driving and a reduced accident rate, we relaxed the amount to £500.

 “If the trend continues it may allow us to extend further clemency.”

Millar acknowledges that £500 is still a “hefty amount” for a driver to pay. “It makes them think twice before becoming a bit cavalier with the way they are driving,” he says.

“We want them to feel like it’s their own car and it’s something they want to take care of.”

Driver reaction to the policy when it was first introduced was “not as bad” as Millar expected. The majority accepted it and those that objected “came round eventually”.

Millar explained to the drivers that the uninsurable costs for fleet were non-sustainable.

 “We now have drivers who view the policy as a ‘norm’, having joined REL with the policy in-situ,” he says.

But it’s not all about hammering drivers; REL also dangles a carrot via one of its clients which has a cash reward scheme for ‘incident free’ motoring every six months.

REL only runs five vehicles for the client, so it is difficult for Millar to gauge how effective the incentive scheme is, but it is something he is considering suggesting to other clients.

He believes that driver communication through Yammer is having a positive impact.

“In the last 12 months in particular we’ve been very aggressive with communication to drivers, putting out short punchy messages about driving habits or things to look out for,” he says.

He believes it is having an effect because REL’s accident rate dropped by around 9% last year compared to 2013.

The fleet team sends out road safety messages as well as important news (such as the abolition of the paper counterpart to the photocard driving licence), which appear on the home screen when drivers first log into Yammer.

“It’s been really good for raising the profile of the fleet department,” says Millar.

“But what I don’t want to do is become a nuisance to people. We want to give messages to drivers, but we don’t want to pester them.”

Yammer does not record how many people have read the message but Millar does get people posting responses.

“We sent out a message about the DPF  (diesel particulate filter) warning light because we had a number of issues with drivers plodding round town and chocking up the DPF filters – it’s expensive to get them regenerated or replaced.

“We said ‘ever wondered what this symbol means?’ with a picture of the DPF warning light, and then we explained what it means and what they need to do to get rid of it.

“We had a number of responses like ‘we never knew what that meant, we appreciate that’. Drivers enjoy reading that sort of stuff because it affects their day-to-day lives, running around doing sales.”

Yammer is also an effective way for Millar to communicate with REL’s 800 grey fleet drivers.

“We do a lot of ad-hoc, short-term work for retailers, such as promotions at Christmas and Easter,” he says. “We employ a lot of people that are only working two or three days a week. When you walk into a supermarket and someone offers you a piece of cheese or asks if you would like to try this new sherry, those people are employed by us.

“They come under the grey fleet remit and we value them just as much as we would value a company car driver. So Yammer gets the fleet message out to everyone.”

Grey fleet was one of first things Millar addressed when he joined REL.

“I put a grey fleet policy together with documents we requested from drivers and launched that countrywide to all the drivers,” he says.

However, grey fleet is now under HR’s remit because Millar didn’t have the resource to manage it.

REL’s 220 company cars are all job need, used by field-based sales people.

The fleet is solus Nissan with the majority of drivers running the Qashqai 1.5-litre dCi, which has CO2 emissions of 99g/km and 74mpg on the official combined cycle.

Qashqai was introduced to REL’s fleet in 2007 at the request of one of its clients, Red Bull.

“When I came on board three years later we still had predominantly Qashqais,” Millar says. “I looked back over the three years and saw the reliability of the cars was extremely good. Every driver I spoke to said how good they were and ‘please don’t change them’.

“My belief is you should have driver engagement at all times because they are the ones behind the wheel.

“I said to the drivers ‘any time you’re dissatisfied with Qashqai and you think something else would be better for the job you must tell me’ and no one ever has.”

When Millar was appointed, REL was simply acquiring the vehicle through its leasing company and the dealership, so he contacted Nissan corporate and said that he wanted to “strengthen our relationship”.

“They were happy to talk and we’ve developed a good relationship,” he says.

REL is now one of Nissan’s top five corporate fleet customers (excluding rental).

“If we’re going to bid for some new business, and I may need 30 or 40 Qashqais in three months’ time, I can call Nissan and they will build them at the Sunderland Plant and ring-fence those cars with no obligation from us,” Millar says. “It means we don’t have to wait for factory orders.”

REL is also switching, where possible, from mid-term hire of 28 days plus and 90 days plus, to contract hire agreements of two to four years. The length of REL’s vehicle rental is determined by the length of the contract with its client.

“If we sign a two-year contract hire agreement we will ask the client to commit to two years with us,” Millar says. “If the client pulls the plug early we will charge them the early termination fees from the leasing company.

“Some clients prefer to pay the extra every month. But they want to have the benefit of being able to say ‘we’re giving you one month’s notice’ and that there won’t be any penalty with the car.”

Millar says that a two-year contract hire deal has always proved cheaper. He estimates a saving of £175 per month on contract hire versus a 90-day-plus mid-term hire arrangement. That equates to a saving of £4,200 over 24 months.

“If a new client only wants a six-month contract we show them that there are palpable savings on the fleet side by committing to a longer contract,” Millar says.

“And you get continuity with the driver and the car.”

Career history

David Millar has always combined fleet with procurement.

He started his fleet career in 1987 with a computer networking company which had a user-chooser fleet of around 70 vehicles.

This was followed by a spell in sales and training at Hewlett Packard from 1997 to 2002 before spending seven years as a volunteer worker in East Africa with his wife.

“We made a life choice in our early 30s,” he says. “We thought if we don’t do it now then it is not likely to happen.”

Millar returned to fleet in 2010 with REL, whose fleet had grown from 10 cars to 70 overnight.

He believes that procurement professionals can’t simply view fleet as another part of their responsibilities.

“You have to be really interested in fleet because if you’re not then you won’t ask the right questions and you won’t be focusing on the things that are important,” he says.

“Fleet is a significant expense, apart from people’s salaries and renting the building,” he adds.

“And if you don’t give it the attention it deserves you could be chucking money out the back door.”

Telematics could save £75,000

REL has been trialling telematics from Quartix in six of its vehicles for the past six months and has identified potential savings of £75,000. 

“We’re primarily trialling it for mileage capture but there are other benefits such as avoiding fraudulent insurances claims,  route planning efficiency, reducing idling
and encouraging safer driving techniques,” says David Millar.