THE publisher of A-Z city street maps has revamped its fleet and changed from outright purchase to contract hire.

A-Z Map Company operates a fleet of 40 vans and cars which are now on full-maintenance contract hire.

It has awarded the contract to Lombard Vehicle Management (LVM), which has introduced a pool mileage facility that allows individual vehicles to exceed the agreed mileage without incurring charges as long as the overall fleet mileage remains within the limit.

A-Z company secretary Steven Berger said: ‘Moving to fully-maintained contract hire means that we will benefit from more efficient vehicles and have known costs. But, operating in this way for the first time, we do not want to be tied too rigidly and we want to be able to monitor and react to the operation accordingly.

‘The solution LVM has developed means that we will have all the benefits of contract hire but sufficient flexibility to accommodate anomalies within the fleet.’