Hi,
I currently have a sales rep working for me
I bought him a 2003 Vectra diesel, it does around 40mpg
He complains at putting £70 in the tank every week He does around 300-350 miles per week
I'm interested in getting him an astra running lpg - are there any other factory conversipons? eg citroen xantia, volvo s40 around 2000-1 cars
How much can he save? What about say, a 1.5 diesel, xantia ?
yours,
Tom Hamer
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Ask him why he only gets 40mpg out of the Vectra! I presume that he has the 1.9 diesel in either 120 or 150ps. He should be getting nearer 50 unless he either drives like a lunatic or spends all day in traffic jams. At 50mpg, a tank should last at least 1½ weeks.
If you get him either of your suggestions, he may well complain that the car has no oomph and needs to be thrashed to get anywhere. Not good for mpg. The only tiem a 1.5 diesel will get in the region of 65mpg is if its in something like a Clio. But as soon as you go for smaller cars you get smaller tanks.
A 1.9 105ps diesel Golf should get 55mpg and do at least 600 miles to the tank!
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"drives like a lunatic"
He's a sales rep. QED.
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He either has a very heavy foot or he's doing a lot more mileage than you say.
£70 buys at least 14 gallons of diesel; at 40mpg that's 560 miles.
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Yes! I was going to say that calculates to something in the order of 25MPG.
What's he doing with the stuff - running his central heating on it?
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You have a more suspicious mind than I Tom - I missed that possibility!
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If a 2003 Vectra then it's either a 2.0 or 2.2. The 1.9's came out later - I'd have considered one if out in late 2003.
He's either getting very poor MPG or doing more miles. I did 400 miles for about £41 in the Mazda6 last week, mainly motorway and not too much stop start.
The answer is almost certainly he's doing 300-350 miles business and the rest is private miles which he is clearly not allowed to do - for a start that is taxable.
Edited by rtj70 on 19/11/2007 at 22:30
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25 mpg might well be correct on an old ship vectra
or mans clogging it
or flogging excess fuel off to the under'nourished' ?
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Assuming that most of his mileage is on the open road, with a little bit of town driving, I'd say 42 mpg is the "can't complain" level of economy for a car like this. Obviously if he's going from newsagent to newsagent rather than between industrial estates, his mpg will be less.
At 105ppl £70 should therefore give 616 miles and quite possibly a lot more.
I wonder if he thinks his local petrol station has a "buy one get one free" on, i.e., when he fills up the Vectra he fills up a private car at the same time and puts the fuel on the same receipt?
Otherwise there is something very wrong either with the car or his driving.
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>A 1.9 105ps diesel Golf should get 55mpg and do at least 600 miles to the tank!
Exactly the car I've got, and I get about 530 miles from a tank, but go a lot faster than I should on the way to work. If I do a lot of motorway driving in a week, it easily gets to 600 miles on one tank.
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"£70 in the tank every week He does around 300-350 miles per week"
Work it out ski - £70 is about 70 litres (more before last week). 300 miles is 4.3 miles per litre, 350 miles is 5 miles per litre - which equate to 19mpg or 23 mpg (give or take). Even for an old diesel driven flat out or stuck in a traffic jam half the day those don't sound reasonable. I've owned 6 diesels over 20 years (1.9 or 2.0 litre Cits) - never got less than 45 mpg, usually 50mpg. I even get 35 towing a caravan.
Perhaps you should check his receipts or mileage or both.
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Phil
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or put it another way .... you're being had ....
my 2.0 zafira will do over 450 miles on £70 of fuel ....
PS that's the 2.0 turbo petrol driven enthusiatically ....
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our 100hp bora only does about 45mpg, wife driving it gently most of the time. needs a fairly long motorway run to average over 50mpg. jag.
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The car is broken, or he's lying to you.
--
04 Grand Scenic 1.9 dCi Dynamique
00 Mondeo 1.8TD LX
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Get him to record mileage for business trips and provide VAT receipts for the fuel used.
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Or he's fuelling more than one car!
Been there, done it, got the teeshirt somewhere.
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That'll be the old can in the boot trick for the wife's/friend's car. The old ones are always the best.
FWIW I get 40+ mpg from a 405 with nearly 200k, when doing short runs. 45 mpg on the open road at the French Mway speed limit.
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If the OP has concerns about his employee's behaviour or driving, he needs to talk to the employee, not us!
There may well be a perfectly reasonable explanation (is the car running poorly, for example?) in which case the OP ends up with egg on face - at the very least.
Or there may be a reason with which the OP, as an employer, is unhappy, in which case he must be careful to follow proper procedure in bringing his concerns to the employee's attention early on and giving the employee the chance to either explain or correct the situation, lest he fall foul of employment legislation!
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I currently have a sales rep working for me I bought him a 2003 Vectra diesel, it does around 40mpg He complains at putting £70 in the tank every week He does around 300-350 miles per week
If said sales rep is working for you, then shouldn't you be re-imbursing his fuel costs? Why is he having to pay the fuel bill?
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Take the car off him for a weekend - give him a Ford KA hire car (£30 for a weekend say). Brim the tank - use it yourself and clock up a few hundred miles - then brim the tank - work out the MPG for yourself.
200 mls divide by 20 litres = 10mls / litre = 10 x 4.5 = 45 mpg!
I think the expense sheet maths of your employee will actually run along the lines of Defiddle by Depauchil - rather than any dy/dx Get him to return journeys, reasons for mileage & mileage each week
Before retiring, the distance paid by the employer was randomly checked, say Stirling to Aberdeen with a route guide and allowing for miles trawling round Aberdeen there was a rough check. We were re-imbursed @ 25p / mile on top of the £375 - £500 / mth depending on your salary level - I ran a smaller car on the bigger allowance.
Driven carefully you could pay for the other car costs & get enough mpg to run around at the weekends for next to nothing. Driven hard you might break even on the mileage allowance.
My last "brand new working car cost me £10.5K" was paid for by my employers twice over 6 years and I got some more back (£2+k when trading it in)
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i knew a guy once who had his speedo mileage reading checked. It turned out he had been claiming for miles not done and the mileage forms he was sending in were 2,000 miles in advance of the speedo reading.
We suspected he had been intending to `use up` this extra by taking his car on an impending holiday, a tour of France and saying he had gone in his wifes car.
Unfortunately for him it was in the days of mechanical digits and it was easy to just peer in and get the reading.
Never seen anyone suspended and then sacked that quickly.
Edited by oilrag on 20/11/2007 at 14:06
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just remembered, we used to have a parts representative come to us in his turbo diesel escort and he liked to do the booze crooze to france but he was having dificulty keeping his speedo reading down rather than up (company fuel card see ) anyway i showed him the very conveniant speedo cable join these cars had just at the back of the engine,not that it had anythink to doo wif me guv
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anyway i showed him the very conveniant speedo cable join these cars had just at the back of the engine not that it had anythink to doo wif me guv
Yes, our engineers discovered this quite early on. :-)
There was an unforeseen consequence though. Every last one of them suffered cambelt failure as the actual mileage passed the cambelt change interval, but the displayed mileage (and therefore servicing) was 20k or so behind.
Cheers
DP
--
04 Grand Scenic 1.9 dCi Dynamique
00 Mondeo 1.8TD LX
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The rep has recently told me he is doing around 1000 miles per week
I've provided the car, I pay for repairs and servicing, he pays for his fuel.
My original post was to ask what's cheapest to run.
Astra LPG ? or is LPG a false economy? i.e. diesel better?
what engine size? thanks
SNIPQUOTE!
Edited by Dynamic Dave on 20/11/2007 at 21:00
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So he's complaining about the fuel consumption of the car that you've bought and maintain.
Give him a monthly allowance equal to what you're currently paying and let him buy whatever car he wants,
Get onto one of the LPG comparison sites, based on fuel costs they'll work out the savings. LPG can be cheaper in some circumstances.
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He complains at putting £70 in the tank every week He does around 300-350 miles per week,
or next day..
the rep has recently told me he is doing around 1000 miles per week
So, the 'rep' tells you 350-ish miles per week one day & a 1000 per week the next day?
If it is 1000 per week the £70 sounds more than reasonable - what's that, at least 55 mpg or something. Is this for real?
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Maybe the £70 needs scaling up along with the mileage? ;)
Edited by oilrag on 21/11/2007 at 08:32
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seen a 2001 Peugeot 306 HDi diesel on the web - may buy it
1560cc engine
what mpg does this do? I searched web and found 54mpg Is this correct?
I've seen 61mpg on a 1.5 Renault Megane diesel
any ideas
thanks
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A 2001 HDi won't be 1560cc, the 306 HDi was 2 litre. The 1.6 HDi engine didn't come along til much later.
If its the 2.0 version, I have this engine in a 2002 Xsara. With very gentle driving I can get 54 MPG, drive it hard and it'll go well down into the 40's.
Edited by nick74 on 02/12/2007 at 09:36
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I'm also looking at 1.5L TD (new shape 2002 megane) 61mpg a couple of people say it is unreliable though
any thoughts?
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could you expand on the arrangement you have with the rep please.
My understanding is that the rep you supply the car for the rep (as a "normal" company car) and he pays for his fuel. By this i assume you mean he pays for his private fuel.
So of the 1000 miles per week, 350 miles are private, for which he is paying £70 per week. This works out at approx 20p per mile, which is double hmrc recommended rate.
I assume he is also paying BIC for this. If the case is not as above, i would speak to your accountant, because you may not be dealing with this correctly in tax terms.
In terms of rep cars, a diesel vectra is one of the most common rep cars, so i dont think any other car will offer a much better mix (ie economy, performance, comfort etc.) Another car may be more economical, but with that kind of mileage a poor performing car will not be appreciated!
If you elaborate on these points, we may be able to help some more.
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t ski, may I repeat my earlier remark that you ought to have this conversation with your sales rep, not with strangers on a bulletin board!
We - and you, it appears - are no better informed on what the situation with mileage and the agreement you have with your employee than we were when you posted your original question.
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I wouldnt want to do thousands of miles a month in a Peugeot 306!
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I wouldnt want to do thousands of miles a month in a Peugeot 306!
I did. Perfectly OK. Nice ride, decent seats, lowish noise levels and big fun off the motorway.
Cheers
DP
--
04 Grand Scenic 1.9 dCi Dynamique
00 Mondeo 1.8TD LX
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If your rep is doing 1,000 miles a week then he's spending his time on the motorway getting to appointments in towns so IMO 40mpg isn't that bad - and the Vectra is a big and comfy car to do that kind of mleage in. Cheap to service too. In my experience of several diesels you can forget the manufacturer figures unles you drive on a feather light throttle (reps generally don't) so the Megane's 61mpg is academic - 45mpg more realistic from a smaller engine working harder. If it was all my money and all my business and the Vectra was proving reliable I'd politely tell him to stick (with) it and adapt his driving for improved economy.
BTW I don't think it is the car that is the problem, I think you have a human resources problem looming and the car's alleged below par economy is masking it.
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