My company maintains a fleet of leased vehicles (approximately 60 heavy and light duty trucks) for use by employees at numerous job sites.  We work throughout the US and use the vehicles to transport equipment, materials and personnel.  Most large materials are transported to job sites via common carrier.

Recently, my field manager stated that the trend among many construction companies is to get rid of company owned vehicles altogether and require that foremen / other employees provide their own vehicles for use by the company.  The company would then provide the employee with a monthly allowance for use of their vehicle.

I see many issues with this approach and am wondering if anyone out there is using it or something similar.

Shayne-I've worked in the leasing/fleet managament industry for 21 years and have seen the trend for/against company-provided vehicles sway back and forth.  There are two reasons for this:

1.  A vehicle costs a lot- at least $.50 per mile driven for a pickup once you consider depreciation, fuel, maintenance, insurance, dmv/tax, interest, etc.  Most companies intend to be equitable to their field employees, so a fair reimbursement plan can be pricey, too, and like all policies ends up getting gamed.

2. Managing the operational aspects of vehicles (fuel, maintenance, repair, dmv) gets more challenging as field operations get further from your HQ.  I can understand why companies get frustrated!

It's important that your CFO/President appreciate just how important vehicles are in supporting your business.  Taking a sober look at your main options is probably the first thing to do:

1.) Reimbursement can take the form of variable cpm (usually at federal guideline but not always,) flat allowance, or a "fixed-and-variable" arrangemement as pioneered by Runzheimer.  To me, the Runzheimer arrangement is the only sustainable way to handle it because it works to ensure fairness to both employer and driver and it is also most tax-friendly to employer.

2.) For a construction company with dispersed operations that drives its vehicles hard (20K+ annual miles) you need either a red-hot internal employee or a qualified and interested fleet management company that is willing to right-set the whole program from vehicle policy all the way through disposal of retired units, and then willing to re-calibrate as your business changes.  Tall order, but there are some really good folks in this industry that can help you.

Call ( 310 851 2460) or email me if you want to kick it around.  I only handle So Cal but can give you other ideas if it helps.

We have sold our auto fleet and now just give Project Managers/Sales people an auto allowance and pay mileage.

 All field related vans, pickups or production vehicles are still owned by the company.