Investment in fleet department pays dividend for Morrison

In July 2006, Morrison Plant Services set up a new fleet department to pull together its various operations in truck, van and car under the control of Tony Raymond.

It brought in a national transport manager, insurance manager and fuel manager to focus on cost savings. Each was expected to give a return on their salary – each has.

Handling an annual fuel spend of £11 million, the fuel manager has the biggest opportunity to make savings.

All vehicles have fuelcards (Keyfuels for when wholesale Platts pricing is favourable, Arval for the national coverage), including spot hire which provides an enormous amount of data for the fuel manager to analyse.

Reports are cascaded to contract managers detailing spend, best/worst performers, trends, where people are filling up and the type of fuels they are buying.

“It only needs a small percentage fall to justify the fuel manager,” says Raymond.

"The company is due to switch grey fleet drivers from AMAP rates to AFR rates to push them into more efficient cars.

"It is also moving away from fully expensed fuel for company car drivers.

"Alternative fuels are on the agenda. Morrison has tried most options including Ashwood Transit hybrid conversions, Smith electric Transits and Mercedes-Benz CNG. However, the costs do not presently add up.

“We aren’t interested in tokenism, it has to stack up from a business case,” says Jeremy Harrison. “At the moment electric vehicles don’t do what we want them to.”

Cars are more viable than vans, however, and Morrison does have a Nissan Leaf and Vauxhall Ampera on order.

Despite bringing the majority of its services in-house, not everything is best handled by the fleet team.

Accident management was outsourced in 2007 to FMG Support in order to speed up reporting. More than 90% of incidents are now reported within 24 hours; it used to take around 40 days when managed internally.

“We settle claims quickly with third parties to keep costs down and also to make sure we
have a good relationship with the public,” says Raymond.