2026-10-29 · Driver sourcing

Leased Vehicle with Driver, or a Driver You Hire?

When admins frame the choice as "supplied driver or our own driver", they usually treat it as a pricing question. It is an ownership question: who provides the vehicle and who employs the person behind the wheel decides who covers a sick day, who signs at the insurer after an incident, and who invoices you at month end. This is not the "drive yourself or be driven" question — that one is about whether you need a driver at all. This article is about who employs the driver: where the four hidden costs sit, how far one administrator's span of control reaches, how to cover the gap when a driver is away, and how to keep liability from splitting. A decision table closes it out. The wider leasing framework sits on our corporate car rental page, seat and vehicle mapping on our corporate vehicle pages, and the chauffeured service model on corporate ground transport.

1. Framing the question: this is not drive-versus-be-driven

Q1: Where exactly is the line between a supplied driver and an in-house driver?

The line is employment, not presence. With a supplied driver the vehicle and the person come from one source: one contract, one invoice, one dispatch number, and cover on a sick day is the supplier's contractual duty. With an in-house driver you lease the car from a fleet and hire the person yourself: two counterparties, two sets of records, two chains of liability. Three questions settle it — whose name is on the labour contract, who pays social insurance, and who sends a replacement when the driver is away. If all three point to one party, it is a single-source model. If they point to two, it is a mixed model. Mixed is not wrong — it is often more flexible — but you should know which item carries the cost. Most failures are not the wrong model; they are a mixed model run as if it were single-source, discovered only when liability fails to connect.

2. What an in-house driver really costs

Q2: Beyond salary, what does an in-house driver actually cost?

Four items. First, payroll add-ons: employer social insurance and housing fund commonly land at thirty to forty per cent of salary, and with a year-end or thirteenth-month payment the annual figure is usually budgeted at 13 to 14 months of salary (confirm the exact treatment with your finance owner and tax adviser). Second, the hiring gap: from posting to independently running a route takes four to eight weeks once you count interviews, background checks and ride-alongs — and the lease keeps running while nobody drives. Third, under-utilisation: a business vehicle needs roughly 120 to 180 kilometres a day to make sense; serving one executive means long idle stretches, so the labour cost sits on very few kilometres. Fourth, management load: attendance, rostering, overtime reconciliation, leave, handover — none of it earns revenue, all of it takes hours every week. Add the four and the "saving" from hiring directly often disappears, which is why most firms under thirty people end up back at single-source.

Q3: Which of these costs is most often missed?

The gap between hiring and productivity. The car is already on the clock while the advert is still live; once someone starts, two or three ride-alongs are needed before they know the routes, the gate procedures, the client buildings and the executive's habits. Output in that window is maybe seventy per cent at full pay. The more hidden version is the second gap: if a driver leaves without a month's notice, the hiring cycle restarts, and a single quarter can contain two interruptions. A single-source contract absorbs this through the supplier's driver pool — write in "24 hours' notice for leave, 15 days for resignation, with a replacement supplied" and the gap closes itself.

3. Span of control: how many cars and drivers one person can hold

Q4: How many drivers and vehicles can one administrator realistically hold?

The practical ceiling, without a dedicated fleet function, is eight to twelve vehicles and ten to fifteen drivers; beyond that you need someone doing dispatch full time. The variable is not the car, it is the person — every additional driver adds a leave request, an overtime claim, a last-minute change of plan, a family issue. Three symptoms tell you the ceiling has been passed: rostering happens by shouting in a group chat, cover is arranged by drivers swapping among themselves, and pre-trip check sheets start getting signed blank. When those appear, either hand the people side over or hire a dispatcher. A simple test: count how many times in a week you make a phone call to find a driver at short notice. More than three means you are already over.

4. The holiday gap: does the car stop when the driver does?

Q5: When a driver is on leave or resigns, how does the car keep running?

An in-house model has to pre-build the cover in people: at least one relief driver, or a "driver-only" standby clause with a fleet. The more realistic route is to outsource the gap: keep drivers in-house day to day, and take a driver by the day from a fleet during peak periods and leave. One detail gets missed every time — a borrowed driver does not know your gate procedures, the executive's preferences or which building the client sits in, so the first two days run at seventy per cent. Brief them a day ahead on paper: route card, access registration, contacts, where the in-car supplies live. Calling someone at seven in the morning gets you a driver who learns on your time. Log each cover event with date, reason, driver and plate; those rows are your evidence at month-end.

5. Split liability: car with one firm, driver with another

Q6: Car with one firm, driver with another — who signs after an incident?

This is the most commonly overlooked point in a mixed model. The registration document is in the fleet's name and the policyholder is the fleet, but the driver is your employee: the claim is opened by the policyholder while fault is assessed against whoever employs the driver. If the driver breaches rules while following your instructions, recovery runs through your employment relationship, not through the vehicle owner. So the contract should fix three things: who attends first, who reports and handles the assessment, and who runs the internal disciplinary process. Add one more: require the policy to name permitted drivers and file your regular drivers, so a claim is not reduced for an unnamed driver. Keep the return inspection sheet, the report receipt and the assessment — with those three, liability stays separable.

6. A six-row decision table for a mixed model