Public and Private – Two Sides of the Same Fleet Decarbonisation Coin…

‘Spare us the private sector examples, as we just don’t operate that way, can’t get the same deals and can’t get our hands on the money that quickly’, says one fleet manager from the public sector.

‘What are we going to learn from a bunch of bin wagons, gritters and road sweepers?’, says an opposite number from the private sector.

I’ve heard those words, and similar, time and again over the years, running fleet efficiency and sustainability projects for operators in both sectors.

To some degree, they’re right. Many public sector fleet operations, like local authority highways maintenance or municipal property management services, have little in common with parcel network linehaul, multidrop B2C home delivery or international haulage. But I’ve realised, during a recent local authority fleet decarbonisation project, that’s not really the point.

In the past, I’d have recommended that fleets stick to type when looking for benchmarks and best practice; that they compare apples with apples and ignore duty types and activities far removed from their core business, even within the same sector. But if the push to decarbonise has taught us anything so far, it’s to open our eyes wide and look over the hedges, to see what others are doing, even in operations distinctly different to our own.

With a background in general haulage, my default setting for operational context and best practice examples tends to be the private sector and what its myriad of operators are doing. Public sector fleets, especially local authorities, with statutory duties and core services to deliver, are best compared with each other, like for like. It’s one of the advantages of public sector fleet advisory work – look at what the many directly comparable public sector fleets are doing and recommend accordingly.

But this recent project gave me a jolt.

There was a compliance element to it, trying to pull together the threads from individual services within the authority with autonomy to run their own fleets, for their own duties. Over the years, that fragmentation had led to a patchwork quilt of vehicle lease agreements, negotiated by staff without fleet management experience. It had also resulted in a lack of coordinated systems and processes to ensure walk round checks, timely vehicle inspections, servicing and maintenance, as well as driver compliance elements, such as driver licensing checks and, even more fundamentally, recording exactly who was driving what and when.

While that basic compliance challenge could be addressed by centralising all fleet management to a new, dedicated, highly experienced team, supported by a strong fleet management system and a rollout of telematics fleet-wide, the target of becoming a Net Zero Carbon Council by 2030 posed an altogether more challenging set of questions:

What does the authority’s fleet look like in the next decade? What fleet activities can be transferred to electric vehicle alternatives? What other fuels can be considered? Where should new infrastructure be installed? How much is needed? Can service staff be asked to use home charging? How can staff be upskilled to use different vehicle and fuel types? Should new electric vehicles be leased, purchased outright or accessed through new, evolving business models? Should depot locations be moved and, if so, to where and how?

It became so obvious. These are essentially the same questions that private sector operators are trying to answer too. The solutions may look a little different, but the puzzle is the same. While a retrofit electric refuse collection vehicle trial might seem a bit niche to an urban multidrop home delivery fleet operator, it might be worth a look. Plus, local authorities are leading the way in installing new recharging infrastructure, not just for residents’ vehicles but for their own future fleets too, across their property estates. It’s very likely that type of area-wide network could be made available to private sector operators too, to improve utilisation and encourage new revenue streams for public infrastructure investment.

So, the lesson was simple. It’s worth speaking to your local authority to see if there are opportunities to collaborate. After all, they’re looking for the same clear guidance, from a reliable source, to find their way on the same decarbonisation journey…