Ever wonder about the importance of safety to fleets in Brazil? Or the minutiae of ordering a company car in Bulgaria?

Neither did Gareth Wilsher until he was handed responsibility for integrating AT&T’s global fleet operations outside of North America.

Now the former accountant runs a division with vehicles in 30 countries, from Asia to South America.

He’s one of a handful of truly international fleet managers bringing together best practice, streamlined policies and improved fleet understanding for a global corporation.

It wasn’t always this way. When Wilsher, accepted the position as AT&T’s international fleet manager 12 years ago, it was with a remit to integrate the European operations into one centralised function, with a standard set of controls. Then the company added the Middle East to his job description.

Finally, in 2009, every other country outside of the USA was pulled in.

At the same time, Wilsher’s reporting line switched from European procurement to the American Supply Chain & Fleet Operations division. He now has a direct link into the third biggest fleet in the USA.

“Two years ago I was overseeing 875 cars; now I have 1,200 across 30 countries,” Wilsher says.

“It’s still growing as well – in the past year, for example, India has gone from 15 cars to 150.”

The UK accounts for 320 of those cars. Unlike many of the other countries, the UK is primarily a non-essential users fleet as it houses AT&T’s shared service centre. Elsewhere, job-need cars dominate.

Wilsher has a team of five fleet managers based in the key countries, such as the UK, Netherlands and Germany.

They are responsible for day-to-day operations as well as providing Wilsher with the data and local market knowledge that is crucial to efficiently running such a scattered fleet.

When he started the amalgamation, the initial challenge was to find out who had a company car. Fleet responsibilities lay with a variety of personnel, from finance to HR to receptionists in some cases.

Next step was to determine the contractual relationships with suppliers: the Belgian fleet, for instance, was funded via four leasing companies for just 100 cars.

Policies had to be re-written into a harmonised agreement, which was then modified by each country depending on local issues and strength of relationship with suppliers.

“You can’t have a one-size-fits-all policy,” says Wilsher. “But you can have a central standard which is tailored to each market.

“HR played a big role in that. Also, relationships with leasing companies were an important resource to understand the market characteristics, trends and cost bases. It gave us that local knowledge so we could balance the driver, corporate and market needs.”

Across Europe, cars are typically replaced after three or four years; elsewhere, where residual values tend to hold their strength for longer, cars can be kept for up to five years.

“The approach we take is to have the same controls in the mature markets like the UK, Netherlands, Germany and France so we can look for the same fleet efficiencies,” says Wilsher.

“The core fleet management issues are fundamentally replicated. Other countries will eventually go down the same line – it’s just the timings which are different.”

Wilsher has set out five priorities that will drive his fleet policy over the next few years: CO2, driver safety, fuel efficiency, continued harmonisation and a new database.

Arguably the biggest challenge for CO2 comes in the non-essential user dominated UK fleet where AT&T can be far less prescriptive in the choices offered to employees.

Thankfully, here, the Government is helping with its emissions-based benefit-in-kind taxation policy.