FleetCutter

The Problem

City of Yarra is a large local council in inner city Melbourne, Australia.

In mid 2007, they came to Fleetcutter to see if they could apply carsharing processes and technologies to make more efficient use of their fleet.

• Each car was making around 25 trips per month.
• There were around 250 drivers sharing 66 vehicles
  
• Vehicles were booked by phoning a part time staff member who used a paper based system 
• Getting timely and reliable driver usage data was impossible

However, both staff and management were concered that cutting the fleet and introducing a new system would mean:

• Less vehicle availability
• Fewer total trips would be made
• There would be a greater administrative overhead
  

In short, they wanted to cut their fleet but not the amount of trips they made.

The Solution 

Below, you can see the number of trips that the council make on a monthly basis (live updates).

You can see that the number of trips has remained stable since the introduction of the new system. 

Initially, these trips were spread over 66 vehicles and 3 separate locations (Richmond, Collingwood and Fitzroy).

FleetCutter implemented their 'quasi carshare' solution and worked closely with council managers to train and introduce drivers to the new method of vehicle booking and usage. 

Through attrition, council then began reducing the number of vehicles they owned. In addition, any replacement vehicles were downgraded to low cost, small engined vehicles better suited to the inner city conditions.

At the time time of writing, the fleet had reduced to 54 vehicles, saving 12 vehicles. 

Results

The introduction of the FleetCutter system:

• Enhanced the utilisation of council vehicles by 41%
• Increased trips made per vehicle per month from 25 to 35 without any reduction in total trip volume. (see MIPS)
  
• Resulted in greater control over council assets, with access to over 150 different online reports
  
• Improved availability of pooled vehicles across the entire fleet.
• Enabled attribution of negative driver behaviour
• Reduced the fleet size by 18%.
• Increased number of drivers per vehicle from 3.68 to 6.93 and encouraged 131 new drivers to the system.