Fleet buyers short-changing drivers

"Most purchasing managers are awarded on saving money, not spending money -- and that's the bottom line," says Campbell York, Senior Executive in charge of vans at Mercedes-Benz Australia. It's for that reason that enhanced safety in commercial vehicles is a hard sell, when it comes at a price. Benz is thus hampered by both the perception and the reality of its vehicle pricing.

"Safety is a very difficult [message] to get across to commercial vehicle operators," York told the Carsales Network.

"When all is said and done, if it's a major investment, it's put in front of a board of directors. Some of them don't have a great knowledge of the intricacies of vehicle or van safety -- and they just look at their capital expenditure. Whether it's got curtain airbags or not really doesn't make it to the boardroom table a lot of the time."

It's selling to fleets where there's a disconnect between the occupational health and safety interests of drivers and the cost-cutting concerns of management ("We need to get that connection a bit closer," says York).

Commercial vehicle drivers working for fleets are really low on the safety totem pole, according to York. Employers will pay great attention to the position of your computer monitor and encourage the correct posture in your chair, fit shields to cutting and grinding machines, pay for recessed lighting and insist on staff taking regular breaks -- but none of that applies to van drivers out on the road.

And it's specifically commercial vehicle drivers most at risk. Fleet managers will ensure that passenger cars purchased meet a necessary minimum standard of crash safety, but van drivers are getting around in "one- or two-star [NCAP-rated] vans".

"For some reason, we just don't think about when it comes to 'well, what are we going to get Bob or Mary, the courier driver, to go and deliver the parcels?' They seem to be the forgotten people, and they shouldn't be," says York. 

York, who oversees sales and support for the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter operating with Australia Post and state ambulance services, believes that even offering an automatic transmission is a safety initiative in commercial vehicles.

"[Automatic transmission] can also be viewed as a safety item," he told the Carsales Network. "What's the visual clutter of the driver's environment? How many times does he or she need to change gears? Is reversing and being able to see out of the vehicle... electric mirrors for example... if you've got multiple drivers in one vehicle, can be considered a safety item."

At this point, the flippant suggestion that the seating position memory function of the higher-grade Mercedes-Benz passenger cars would be a unique selling proposition in the company's vans was met by York's acknowledgement that there is a particular van-buying demographic that might be open to that. Private buyers of Mercedes vans are much more likely to acknowledge and understand the validity of the safety argument.

"If it was you and I buying a van for our own plumbing business, we'd probably go and buy all of those things -- and some of our customers do."

"We do quite well with private buyers -- with our product range," he says, "because they consider those things more heavily."

York refers to private buyers of commercial vehicles -- buyers who might use the van as a tool-of-trade during the week and a recreational vehicle or family transport at weekends -- as "Mars Bars". It's all work, rest and play for them.

"Rather than have the traditional thinking of: 'I'll have the Commodore as a family car and I'll have a brand of van as the work car', people are now rationalising and putting them altogether and saying: 'Well, why would I have two vehicles when I can actually have one that does both?' We do that with every facet of our lives these days. You've got a phone that's a camera."

If private buyers of commercial vehicles are using their vans to cart around more than just tools, safety is a bigger issue than ever for these vehicles.

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