We find ourselves in what is being called an ‘austerity economy’, the government is cutting public spending while increasing the amount of money that is being drawn from the public purse in the form of taxes. And that’s a fine economic model, obviously cutting spending while increasing income is the very definition of getting richer so how can you apply this to your fleet?
If your company owns its own fleet vehicles then obviously you’re liable for maintenance, upgrades and replacements, fuel, insurance, taxes, everything. That’s a lot of spend to keep your team on the road.
But you need to keep your sales team on the road so that’s unavoidable, right?
Well, not if you look into car leasing and contract hire options.
Contract hire allows you, as a company, partnership or sole trader to rent a fleet car where your monthly premiums remain unchanged for the rental period. The fall in value is borne by the rental company and not by you. Because insurance and maintenance are all taken care of you have a predictable cost making budgeting simpler and time consuming factors such as selling old units, dealing with garages and workshops can all be avoided. This is as true for van contract hire as it is for car rental.
Car rental on the other hand is much like rental only for longer periods and that means better terms for you.
Renting your vehicles can mean that after the first year you should be able to get better terms on your monthly rental fees, the standard practice here in the UK is to request an initial payment to the value of the first three months followed by 35 standard monthly payments, for example. The mileage on these contracts is generally assumed to be 10,000mpa but you should be able to negotiate if your experience leads you to believe your vehicle usage will be different.


