The circumstances vary from company to company but often it is that a new employee is provided with a short term hire vehicle whilst on a trial period. Sometimes the employee leaves and the car is not returned. It then gets mistaken for one of the company's fleet vehicles and is given to another employee as their permanent vehicle.
On other occasions the car is given to an employee on a short term basis and they are told to speak to the appropriate department to order their lease car. Sometimes the employee doesn't get round to it and the procedures within the company are sufficiently lax that it doesn't get picked. The company then pays considerable sums of money unnecessarily.
In some cases the employee told us that they continued driving the short term vehicle and did nothing about ordering their new car, because the hire car was nicer model than the contract hire car that would be assigned to them.
How should a company fleet be managed so as to avoid paying out unnecessarily on short term contracts? Firstly it can make a big difference if you set a return date for the hire vehicle rather than leaving it open, asking the hire company to contact you a few days before this date to see if you want to extend it.
Naturally if you hire a car and leave the date open, as long as you are paying for the vehicle, the hire company is not going to phone you and ask you if you want to bring it back.
In many respects it can far better to start out with car leasing, even for a new employee who is on a trial period, because presumably if they do not work out, another employee will be taken on in their place. It is only really if it is a position that you are not likely to refill, is it worth initially considering car hire.
In any event the sooner you can get the employee into a long term contract the better, because you will be paying somewhere around four times as much by taking a car on a short term basis.
Sometimes the reason given by the company for not opting for contract hire is because the employee is on a short term contract of perhaps one year or eighteen months. It is however possible to get a short term lease car. If you are looking for one of the shorter term deals you are generally a little more limited in choice but they are available. These vehicles are usually supported by the manufacturer as a means to register vehicles that are not selling particularly well.
In summary it is very important to audit the fleet regularly to make sure you do not have vehicles on the fleet, which you thought were long term car leasing vehicles but are in fact hire cars.
