Fleet operators could reduce administration and manage their vehicles more efficiently if they were provided with greater transparency from vehicle movement companies.

That’s the view of Engineius, a growing business that aims to remove the ‘headache’ from vehicle movements.

Working across the automotive sector, the company seeks to provide movements throughout a vehicle’s entire lifecycle; starting with first delivery, through servicing and accident management, to disposal.

Chris Clibbery, Engineius CEO, told Fleet News that it’s not unusual for fleet operators to interact with five or six different companies to move their vehicles.

He said: “They might need some plated movements, they might need just driven movements, they might need some HGV movements and they might want car transporter movements. So, they would have to go to a number of different people to do that and the service level from the industry was really poor as well.”

Using its bespoke software, Engineius provides an on-demand booking platform with instant pricing and short lead times.

There’s no monthly fees, just a pay-as-you-go charging model, and the entire process can be managed electronically, reducing administration time.

Clibbery explains: “Traditionally, there's been quite big admin teams supporting vehicle movements because it all operates by pen and paper, emails and phone calls. Often people are left waiting for a response or chasing drivers by phone. A lot of what we do allows people to self-serve.”

By providing live tracking, users can see where their vehicle is at all times and receive real-time ETAs. The system can also integrate with existing fleet management software to simplify the process further.

“The industry really didn't want the customer to see what was going on with their car because it might be using that car to get drivers from A to B, it might have four agents in it driving around to pick up other cars, so that transparency wasn't available.

“We don't withhold any information, the customer sees what we see and not only do we show everything on every individual movement, we also then show comprehensive reporting data back to the user.”

One of the unintended benefits for fleet operators is the vehicle checks, which are carried out at the start and end of each movement. Details photos, mileage data and condition reports are available in real time, which some fleet managers have begun to use to carry out remote inspections.

Since launching in 2018, Engineius has developed a network of more than 400 drivers and moves tens of thousand of vehicles per year. By working across the fleet sector and moving vehicles for a variety of different reasons, the business says it can increase its efficiency by cutting the number of one-way journeys made by drivers.