The Grey Fleet – managing work-related road risk in private vehicles

What is a Grey Fleet?

The Grey Fleet is any vehicle that is operated on behalf of your organisation that isn’t owned or leased by you. For example, staff using their own vehicles for work-related purposes or a senior manager being who is receiving funding to buy their own car. Today, approximately 40% of work vehicles are part of a Grey Fleet.

While your organisation might not be responsible for the insurancecosts of these vehicles. If your employee becomes involved in a road traffic crash, hidden costs to your company can still have a significant negative impact. 

This is especially relevant today as more and more companies are hiring self-employed or freelance drivers to carry out their business.

What are the hidden costs?

Absenteeism

If an employee is signed-off work for a few days as a result of a collision, your company is losing money as a result. Paid leave, staff cover and possibly additional training are all hidden costs. Not to mention customers getting a poorer quality of service.

Lost productivity

With employees signed off work, you lose out on the work that employee would have done in that time. 

Late deliveries

A road traffic collision can result in delays and late deliveries. If this is your company’s core business it could have serious damage as customers label your service as unreliable and look elsewhere.

Brand damage

If your vehicle or service is associated with a collision. Your reputation could be damaged just by dangerous driving.

What impact does this have on my company?

For every €1 recovered through insurance there are €8 - €53 in uninsured losses and hidden costs. On average companies need a minimum €7500 of revenue per vehicle to fund uninsured losses. Not to mention, as an employer you are required to show the same Duty of Care to employees driving their own vehicles as you do for company drivers. 

As such, grey fleets should be included in your company risk management strategy in exactly the same way as a company car driver, as a van driver and as a truck driver.

Grey Fleet Management is covered by instructor Andy Price in lecture four of the EASST Academy Road Safety at Work: Online Course for Managers. Go to the course to learn more.

We are currently offering 50% off our online fleet management course, simply quote STAYSAFE50​​​​​ when you sign up​​.