How You Can Make Big Savings On Your Car Costs
Wednesday, 9. June 2010
We have a bit of an exclusive from GHA Finance this week. I am often fighting with dealers and my quoting systems to get the keenest rates for my clients. But whilst we try to get the rates as low as possible customers see this as the only area where they can make cost savings when changing their cars. In fact this shouldn’t be the end of the journey, it should be the start. There are many things you can do to minimise your transport costs which we have discussed in the past such as:
Tele or Video Conferencing
Pool Cars
Public Transport
Car Hire
Car Club
Along with managing fuel consumption, paying a little more for energy saving tyres, sending drivers on specialist training courses, careful route planning and so on. I try to keep my costs down but when I recently travelled to Manchester from my town in Sussex for a meeting I didn’t think twice about driving. A colleague then said – why did you drive when it would have been cheaper and more comfortable by train? In fact I had wrongly assumed that the cost of the train journey would be more expensive. As I have found out, provided you can book about a week in advance and book through Trainline you can save a fortune. This particular trip would have cost me £37.50 return. In terms of fuel cost I would have had to achieve 72.6 miles per gallon for the same cost. The time to get there was about the same but of course the 4 hour each way journey on the train would have meant that I could have completed a lot of work and a had a bit of a snooze as well. At the prices charged by Trainline I could save money and also be more productive by travelling on the train rather than driving. So next time you or employees are about to make a long business trip check out the alternatives, you could save a fortune and if you do it often you may be able to reduce your annual mileage on your lease car and save even more money. By Graham Hill
