Fleet size irrelevant to fuel buying habits, survey claims
The method in which fleets acquire fuel seems to be the same across the board regardless of how many vehicles they’re made up of.
A survey conducted by MIB Data Solutions asked 3,003 companies with fleets consisting of fewer than 25 vehicles and around 600 companies with more than 25 fleet vehicles how they bought their fuel and the responses were creepily close.
Here’s how the results came back:
The numbers in regards to fleet size don’t add up to 100% as a few rely on more than a single payment method, however Nick Boddington, MD of MIB Data Solutions, was shocked by the similarity.
“Certainly, we expected a much greater disparity between small and large fleets when it comes to the amount of control they apply to fuel buying,” he explained, “but the figures for all the methods of purchasing we investigated are very similar.
“It is difficult to draw conclusions from this other to say that generally fleets of all sizes are equally as good, or as bad, as any other when it comes to buying fuel.”
He recognised how around three quarters of fleets employ purchasing methods that give them some degree of managerial control i.e. fuel cards, bunkered fuel and local accounts with the rest use methods such as pay-and-reclaim which provide little or none.
Nick added: “Our suspicion is that there are a hardcore of managers in businesses of all sizes – perhaps representing one in four or five of all fleets – who simply do not believe or recognise that the buying of petrol and diesel is something that can be actively managed.
“However, any fleet that uses fuel cards will tell you that they can play an important part in steering drivers towards cheaper fuel outlets, identifying which vehicles and drivers are heavy users of fuel, and minimising fraudulent claims.”
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