A large car and van fleet has outsourced much of its supply and fleet management but will retain its in-house fleet manager.

Evander Glazing & Locks signed the fleet outsourcing contract with ALD Automotive, which now supplies and manages many aspects of the company’s Ford Transit-dominated fleet of 240 vehicles, which are leased on four-year/100,000-mile contracts with mileage pooling.

The glazing company also has a 58-strong user-chooser company car fleet with cars both leased and operated via an employee car ownership (ECO) scheme. There are an additional nine employees who have taken a cash alternative to a company car.

ALD will manage areas such as windscreen replacement, short-term rental, accident management and breakdown and maintenance.

However, strategic fleet management decisions and areas such as ensuring duty of care obligations are fulfilled will remain the responsibility of the in-house fleet manager.

“Outsourcing the fleet to a specialist aids operating efficiency and effectiveness, but we are ultimately responsible for the vehicles so I need to undertake internal checks and audits to make sure Evander Glazing & Locks is legally compliant,” explained Richard Tuck, the company’s in-house fleet manager.

“Outsourcing is a means to an end, by doing this it allows me to concentrate on the strategic decisions without being bogged down by the day to day.”

ALD won the contract following a tender process, which saw incumbent supplier Lex Autolease lose the contract.

ALD has already begun supplying the first 170 new vans under the contract, which according to Tuck will save the company some £538,000 over the four-year lease term.

To ensure it receives value for money, Evander will monitor the costs of its newly outsourced services on an exception basis so any unusually high invoices can be investigated.
 

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