“Don’t expect telematics to solve your fuel costs and don’t expect it to reduce admin overheads,” McAtear warns.

She advises fleet managers to know what information they want from telematics and focus on it “otherwise you will get blinded by the data”.

McAtear would like to bring someone into the business to take an “overarching, analytical view” of the telematics data.

“The challenge is to keep using that information in as efficient way as possible,” she says.

For McAtear, the next personal challenge is the Institute of Car Fleet Management (ICFM) diploma training. There is no let-up in her desire to keep learning and stay ahead of legislation.

Switching could slash tyre costs

E.On could reduce its commercial vehicle tyre budget by 15% by switching from premium to mid-range tyres.

McAtear began looking at mid-range tyres as a result of EU tyre labelling legislation, which means that all tyres are now rated for fuel efficiency, wet grip and external noise.

She asked her maintenance supplier to provide a list of the premium tyres put on the fleet over the past year to compare their label ratings to those of mid-range tyres.

“I was really surprised to notice that a lot of the mid-range tyres that had previously been out of scope for us were the same, or better, on their tyre labelling than the premium tyres we had been using,” says McAtear.

“Although premium tyre manufacturers say they factor far more things in when constructing the tyre, such as aquaplaning, and the mid-range tyres tend to only concentrate on the label areas, it’s still a significant enough difference to make it worthwhile doing a trial.”

McAtear has instructed her maintenance provider to fit any brand of tyre to E.On’s commercial vehicles provided it has at least a ‘C’ rating for wet grip and ‘E’ for fuel efficiency.

“It will be a challenge because when drivers get their first set of tyres they might be saying ‘that’s not premium, I’m not having that’,” McAtear says.

It will take time to determine whether E.On should make a permanent change to its tyre policy.

“We don’t go through tyres quickly enough to get a lot of data,” she says.

“I need to analyse whether changing tyres has an adverse effect on our accident rate and whether we have to change tyres more frequently.”