A new benchmarking survey by the Association of Fleet Professionals (AFP) provides probably the most serious attempt yet to answer the question of how many people are required to manage a fleet.

It includes responses from 118 organisations that together control 118,000 cars, vans and trucks, and the number of full-time employees (FTEs) they employ.

The quantity and types of vehicles each fleet operates, as well as acquisition method, vehicle type and which associated fleet responsibilities are managed in-house, are also covered in the methodology.

Lorna McAtear, vice chair at the AFP, said: “As fleet managers struggle with increased workloads and managing resources, how many people should be managing a fleet is a question that comes up time and time again amongst AFP members, and the information we have compiled indicates why it is so difficult to answer.

“For example, if you look at the responses we have received, fleets with two FTEs in the fleet team range in size from 633 vehicles to 5,300, which is a considerable difference. However, there are good reasons for this variance, with the biggest fleet having a large number of cash allowance drivers.

“There are many other instances of this kind of diversity in our research, serving to illustrate both the significant value of this new data, but at the same time, underlining the difficulty of using it to produce usable benchmarking figures.”

Despite this complexity, credible headline averages have been created. As expected, these show a strong relationship between fleet size and FTEs employed, although there are numerous data points outside of this formulaic relationship that underline the number of factors at play.

Especially, the in-house and outsourcing mix, and vehicle types within the overall fleet, have a strong impact. For this reason, the results are separated by funding method and fleet size, and a weighting is applied to the fleet type – salary sacrifice, cash allowance, company car, LCV and HGV.

For a mega fleet of more than 1,000 vehicles, the average number of FTEs is 5.25 for externally funded fleets and 12.25 for outright purchase. For a large fleet of 500-1,000 vehicles: 3.55 funded and 8.25 outright purchase. For a medium fleet of 100-500 vehicles: 1.32 funded and 1.75 outright purchase. Finally, for small fleet of 100 vehicles or less: 0.83 funded and 1.00 outright purchase. More detailed figures are available to AFP members by downloading the report from the AFP web site.

Lorna said: “It’s important to stress these results are very much a reflection of the 118 fleets who responded to our survey but the figures appear to us to feel broadly representative. Generally, fleets within the AFP that depart significantly from most of these averages have their own particular demands and requirements.”