‘An amazing fleet’

Travelling down every road, delivering letters and parcels to 29 million addresses six days a week, our iconic red fleet is instantly recognisable.

We operate the UK’s largest fleet in every sense: the most trucks, the most vans, the most mileage, and the most drivers. The level of complexity that comes with introducing policy changes and new initiatives to 46,000 vehicles and 90,000 drivers is both unique and challenging.

We have some of the most advanced processes around for safety and cost efficiency, and we are constantly investigating new ways to improve our fleet performance, with safety a constant priority.

Road safety manager, Mark Bromhall, is responsible for driving down incidents and managing risk. ‘We target ourselves on reducing road traffic collisions (RTCs) year-on-year and we are in our third year of achieving this,’ he told Fleet News.

‘We have a suite of operational road risk standards including recruitment, how we buy the vehicle and what we do on the road. Four years ago, we introduced a new driver training programme. We went from having lots of regional partners to one provider and from 120 courses to just three, which gives us greater consistency.

‘We put in place a minimum driver standard which we assess against, but our focus isn’t to fail people, it’s to improve them. Drivers have an initial assessment and the instructor will coach them before giving them a final assessment. They spend more than two hours on the road so fewer than 2% fail to make the grade.

‘Last year, we reduced our RTC count by 9.1%, equivalent to 750 fewer accidents. The year before that, we reduced by 12% and so far this year, we are down 5%. That’s around 2,500 fewer collisions over a three-year period, saving us £1.5 million in claims costs last year alone, not to mention the cost of repairs and time off work.’

While Mark has completed his first decade at Royal Mail, head of fleet operations, Debbie Rivers, has notched up her 22nd year, having joined from university. A former workshop and regional manager, she moved to her current role six months ago and is responsible for cost initiatives, utilisation/efficiency and supporting the driver safety programmes.

‘It’s about making best use of vehicles, fully utilising them, updating our profiling of customers and where demand is changing, and linking our fleet to customers’ requirements,’ said Debbie. ‘We do it annually – also for our planes, trains and boats. We work on 97% fleet availability and we are constantly looking at ways to simplify our routes for consistency and reliability.’

We are constantly reassessing our fleet, routes and networks to minimise journeys. Fewer journeys improve safety and reduce fuel use and CO2 emissions.

Judges at last year’s Fleet News Awards, said: ‘Royal Mail faces a unique set of challenges and has developed a range of initiatives that tackle and improve every area of its fleet. It recognises that, as a commercial operation, it now needs to take a commercial approach with its workshops and empty legs programmes, but this is within a wider future strategy that is focused on finding the best solutions to every challenge. An amazing fleet.’