The contract hire and fleet management specialist surveyed over 100 fleet operators on the importance of the fleet services that support their main contract hire. Short-term lease came out on top with 51% ranking it as extremely important or important, with accident management in second place (50%) and daily rental third (49%).

‘There’s a sense of cautious optimism as we see economic conditions improving,’ said Shaun Barritt, managing director. ‘However, no-one wants to over commit which is why the use of short term lease and daily rental is so popular, because both services give fleet operators flexibility and enable them to keep their options open.

‘Accident management has always been seen as important, simply because accident costs can be so expensive and the process of handling any incident very time consuming. For this reason, it’s always been a service we’ve seen high demand for.’

Surprisingly risk management came in fourth place (23%) in the league table of fleet manager’s priorities, with fuel cards in fifth (20%), followed by grey fleet management (11%) and salary sacrifice (6%).

‘Where we were a little surprised by the findings was with fuel cards, grey fleet management and risk management, where far less importance was placed on these than we anticipated,’ commented Barritt.

‘All of these services offer cost savings, efficiencies and a whole range of other advantages and perhaps the widespread benefits need to be better communicated, because clients who use these services wouldn’t be without them.’