THREE-year/60,000-mile replacement cycles are a long distant memory for fleet driver Roger Harris, who has clocked up a mammoth 450,000 miles in his Ford Mondeo. His L-registered turbodiesel hammers down 11,000 miles of highway every month for environmental waste company SARP UK.

Working from the firm's Portsmouth depot, near his home, he can drive up to four 1,000-mile round trips in a week, starting at 2am to beat the traffic. An example of a day's journey would see him leave with chemical samples from Portsmouth and visit Birmingham, Manchester, Stockport, Sheffield and Derby before returning to Portsmouth for 2pm.

Harris, who has the car serviced every few weeks by Hendy of Cosham, said: 'I had a Ford Sierra before this and did 300,000 miles in that. This is not a fleet policy. It's just for me because I drive so many miles. I want to get it to 500,000, but that wasn't the idea when I got the car.'