Fleet Management

The scope of responsibilities ranges from demand planning to vehicle procurement , registration, and day-to-day operations, all the way through to return or sale. In between lie maintenance, claims processing, fuel and charging billing, contract management, and the documentation of all inspections.

Legally, this entails the company’s responsibility as a vehicle owner. From a business perspective, it represents a cost category that, in many companies, ranks among the largest outside of personnel and real estate.

In larger organizations, a dedicated fleet management fleet manager function handles the oversight. In medium-sized companies, fleet management is often an additional responsibility assigned to purchasing, human resources, or facility management. Other departments involved include controlling, occupational safety, and the works council.

The effort involved rarely stems from individual tasks, but rather from the interfaces between them. Contract data is held by the lessor, odometer readings by the drivers, invoices in accounting, and inspection records in the occupational safety file. As long as these sources remain separate, it is impossible to provide reliable cost estimates or to quickly verify that all obligations have been met. As the fleet grows, the workload therefore shifts from management to data maintenance.