Trevor Wicks, Fleet Management Coordinator for Knox City Council, shares his views on buying locally made vehicles, on boosting community transport services, and on retaining workshop staff with a diversified breadth of skills.
What issues and challenges are involved in running a fleet for one of Victoria’s most populated municipalities?
One issue occupying the minds of fleet managers, and councils in general, these days is the question of just how far to go in supporting the local vehicle manufacturing industry.
As you probably know, there has been a lot of pressure on governments at all levels to purchase Australian-made vehicles, and this has prompted a lot of debate among fleet managers. 
It’s a complicated issue of course, because the ‘moral argument’ for supporting Aussie products has to be balanced in a dispassionate way against a whole lot of other factors.
With 75 passenger vehicles and 66 utilities, we support both the local and imported sectors, but as a responsible council, our decision on what to buy has to be governed by the best whole-of-life cost. In some cases that might favour local vehicles, but in other cases the purchase of an imported vehicle might make economic sense.
What factors influence your decision on whether to buy imported or local vehicles?
Obviously the purchase price is important, and in recent years the high Aussie dollar has put locally made cars at a disadvantage in that respect.
Another important consideration when calculating whole-of-life cost is a vehicle’s residual value. And it’s just a fact of life that imported vehicles have a higher residual value these days. So when you run as many vehicles as we do, that residual value factor can represent a huge amount of money.
But that’s not to say that a locally made vehicle might not have certain attributes that outweigh its lower residual value. In fact, they often do, and when that’s the case, we make our purchase decision accordingly.
As far as servicing goes, we find there is hardly any difference in cost and efficiency between the local and imported dealerships.
What other topical issues currently occupy the minds of fleet managers?
One issue is the question of fringe benefits tax, along with the pros and cons of novated leases with regard to employees’ cars.
We’ve opted for owning all our own cars and then effectively leasing them back to employees on what I call a user-pays basis, depending on how much they want to contribute from their salaries.
Basically, we offer them a range to choose from, but if someone wants a Holden Calais, they pay a lot more than someone making the more frugal choice of a small Toyota.
Something else we’ve looked at lately is the GPS tracking of vehicles and plant. I think it can offer a lot of advantages in terms of increasing productivity, in the monitoring of usage rates and in guarding against theft. The anti-theft aspect is particularly important because there seems to be an increased incidence of large items of plant and equipment being stolen from council yards in recent years.
We already use GPS tracking in a limited way and plan to increase its use, but we are conscious that we need to reassure employees that it’s not being introduced to check on their whereabouts. I gather there’s been a bit of anxiety about that in a few councils, where some employees haven’t fully understood the practical reasons for introducing GPS tracking.
What do you think some of the future challenges will be for fleet managers?
I think a growing need for community transport will be something that this council and a lot of others will have to increasingly address in coming years.
The main thing driving community transport is the fact that we now have many more senior residents living in our communities. In addition, they are a lot fitter than their contemporaries may have been several decades ago, and they want to get out and about a lot more.
To meet this need we already have two 37-seat mini coaches in our fleet, along with a shopping bus, and they are pretty much flat-out all the time. For instance, each year the service carries an average of 28,000 passengers and covers an average of 53,000 km.
Essentially, the vehicles provide regular transport to fixed destinations, as well as short trips and excursions.
I know community transport is also expanding in neighbouring councils, so it would probably make sense at some time in the future to discuss sharing our assets to enhance the service.
Turning to maintenance and workshop skills, are there any challenges on that front?
Well, one challenge that I think we will all face in the future is to find mechanics with the breadth of skills to suit the wide range of equipment which a typical council deploys.
At the moment most councils have mechanics who can turn their hand to fixing a chain saw just as easily as repairing a vehicle. But a lot of the youngsters coming out of trade schools nowadays have been equipped with rather defined skills, which means they can’t work across the full range of equipment quite so easily.
Another challenge will be retaining staff in the face of the increasingly high salaries being offered by private enterprise workshops.
But I think in that respect councils can offer the advantage of a more congenial and less stressful working environment.
For instance, I regularly take one or other of my mechanics along with me to the IPWEA’s Plant & Vehicle Management Workshops. That’s not the sort of professional development opportunity which is readily available in private enterprise.