Closing the Grey Fleet Safety Gap
WORDS BY ANBY ALCOMENDAS
Company-owned vehicles often sit at the centre of an organisation ' s safety strategy. They are regularly inspected, maintained, and monitored through established policies and procedures. Yet thousands of employees drive their own vehicles for work every day, creating a significant safety blind spot that needs to be addressed.
At the 2026 Australasian Fleet Leadership and Education Summit, Jerome Carslake, Program Director at the National Road Safety Partnership Program( NRSPP), and Lydia Stephens, Trust and Safety Manager at HireUp, explored the growing risks associated with grey fleet vehicles and shared how organisations can strengthen their safety approach.
Building a tool for improved grey fleet safety
Grey fleets can offer flexibility and reduce the need for company-owned vehicles. However, they also create uncertainty around vehicle maintenance, registration, insurance, and driver compliance. Employers tend to have less direct control over these vehicles, but the duty of care remains the same.
Recognising the growing need for better guidance, the NRSPP established a Grey Fleet Working Group in 2017 to develop resources that would help organisations better understand and manage these risks. More than 25 organisations contributed to the original Grey Fleet Safety
Management Guide, resulting in a comprehensive framework for improving workplace safety.
This further led to the development of the Grey Fleet Safety Management Model, a free online tool designed to make implementation more accessible. One of its biggest strengths is that it doesn’ t treat safety as an all-or-nothing exercise.
Rather than expecting organisations to implement every initiative at once, the model uses a maturity-based approach that helps businesses identify their current position and develop a realistic pathway for improvement. The framework evaluates 12 key measures and generates recommended actions that are categorised into short-, medium- and long-term priorities.
Importantly, the tool recognises that every organisation operates within different constraints. Funding, staffing, and time all influence how quickly changes can be implemented. So, the model allows businesses to adapt recommendations to suit their specific circumstances.
Ultimately, it provides a manageable and less overwhelming approach to improving safety.
HireUp ' s grey fleet journey
To demonstrate how the model works in the real world, Lydia shared HireUp ' s experience testing the framework.
28 ISSUE 60 AUGUST 2026 / WWW. AFMA. ORG. AU