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How to be an instant billionaire (and why flat rate fuel expenses are getting less user-friendly)

Put 100 ordinary people into a room with Microsoft founder Bill Gates and, voila!, everyone present is worth an average of a billion dollars until he goes. The point gets made often but it does illustrate the problem with averages. They are susceptible to outliers. And also prone to lead to disappointment. Bill Gates is an extreme example but he’s a reminder that we need to be careful when relying on averages in day-to-day fleet managemen

ANPR – a million reasons a day to keep on top of grey fleet documentation

Paul Hollick looks at how police now stop five times more vehicles with the help of automatic number plate cameras It's still surprising to be reminded about the huge amount of data collected on us every day. If your company has a grey fleet, for example, it's very likely the police know more about whether your drivers are driving legally than you do. At any one time, police forces in the UK hold over 18 billion time and location records c

In God we trust. Everyone else must provide data.

All relationships ultimately rest on trust. At TMC, our business is mainly capturing and merging information to help our clients manage their fleet operations efficiently. But part of it always involves checking the accuracy and trustworthiness of the information. One of the most famous tales about honesty—the one where George Washington owned up to damaging his father's prized cherry tree—is not true at all. When there’s a cost to being

More realistic fuel expenses rates. Something to thank WLTP for?

Getting fuel measurements wrong can be costly. In 1983, an Air Canada Boeing 767 famously ran out of fuel 41,000 feet above Ontario because its ground crew had confused pounds with kilograms during refuelling. The captain landed the plane safely. But the incident is one of many similar cases underlining why bad measurements make for bad calculations. We can see how the same issue affected hundreds of thousands of company car and car allowan

80,000 UK drivers are only one speeding ticket away from losing their licence, finds TMC

New analysis of UK licensing data also reveals wide regional variations in penalty points carried, highlighting need for firms to check the validity of their business drivers’ licences Nearly 81,000 drivers in the UK have nine penalty points on their driving licences, putting them just one endorsable offence away from potentially losing their licence. Altogether, 2.7 million motorists in England, Scotland and Wales currently have three or

What’s in the pipeline for HGV and LCV fuels?

by Paul Hollick. New infrastructure commission report urges zero carbon deadline for new freight vehicles by 2040. Readers of my posts won’t need to be reminded that diesel-powered freight transport is one of the most – if not the most – important parts of the global economy. Whole books have been written about how quickly society would fall apart in the unlikely event that trucks ever stop running. This dependence on trucks and LC

Micromobility – coming soon to an LCV fleet near you?

By Paul Hollick. Two-wheeled LCVs probably sound a pretty niche proposition right now. But if government thinking is correct, we should expect electric bikes and trikes to play an increasing role with urban delivery and service fleets in the next few years. The wide-ranging Urban Mobility Strategy report just unveiled by the government says new regulations for ‘micromobility vehicles’ will be a priority. I really recommend reading the r

First thing’s first!

It’s interesting that the UK government have found time to publish an ambitious strategy for future urban mobility, at a time when fleets and businesses are crying out for basic but vital tax information. Don't get me wrong. I'm completely behind the application of expert, joined-up thinking when reviewing the opportunities and challenges around mobility policy. It’s key to the UK’s competitiveness. But it is imperative that the gover

Spring Statement 2019 Summary

The wait for clarity on WLTP and future BIK rates goes on... Yesterday's Spring Statement by the Chancellor offered few clues as to exactly when the government will put an end to the damaging uncertainty around WLTP and company car tax rates after 2021. A written statement from the Treasury stated only that the government will announce its response to its recent consultation on the impacts of WLTP on BIK 'in the coming months'. We expect the

Can businesses cut travel by 25% in the next five years?

By Paul Hollick. It's possible. But be careful how you go about it. With so many businesses scouring their bottom lines for cost savings in the current climate, I wasn’t surprised to see that a recent survey found a significant proportion of companies actively seeking to cut their business travel. Half of 250+car fleets and six out of ten 100-250-car fleets told Sewells, the fleet analysts, they believed they could reduce business travel b

Will the government undo its damaging company car tax policies in 2019?

Welcome to a 'baffling' and 'bonkers' 2019. I wish I were being flippant, but I'm not. Those are words recently applied by the SMMT and ACFO, respectively, to the government's peremptory changes to plug-in grants last October. They illustrate the industry's mounting frustration at the damaging disparity between the government's badly thought-out changes to fleet/motoring taxes and its goals for green mobility and a healthy automotive sector

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