Duty of care in ground transport. Six areas to check, so you know which supplier you can trust.
Air travel in a corporate programme is documented to within an inch of its life. The car that collects the same traveller at midnight is often arranged by whoever was free that afternoon. This guide is written to be forwarded to whoever should be closing that gap.
The gap
The most supervised journey, followed by the least
An employer's obligation to look after people it sends travelling does not pause between the aircraft door and the hotel. In practice, that is exactly where most programmes stop looking. The flight is booked through a managed channel, tracked, risk rated and reported on. The car at the other end is booked on somebody's phone, by a person who has never been to that city, from a supplier nobody in the organisation has assessed.
It is an odd imbalance, because the ground legs are where the incidents actually happen: the long drive after a long flight, the unfamiliar city at night, the lone traveller, the driver nobody can identify. They are also the legs where a traveller is most obviously somebody's responsibility and least obviously anybody's job.
This guide sets out what to ask, in an order that makes different suppliers comparable. We are a chauffeur company, so we answer these questions for a living and we are not a neutral party. The questions are useful whoever you appoint, and several of them are ones that we would rather you asked us properly than took on trust. If you are running a formal exercise, our guide to writing a chauffeur services tender covers scope, pricing structures and scoring as well.
The questions
Six areas, and what a good answer sounds like
| Area | What to ask | What a weak answer looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Who is driving | Is the driver employed by you or introduced by you? Whose vehicle is it? What checks are carried out on the individual, by whom, and how often are they repeated? | A description of what the industry generally does, rather than what this company does. Ask for the answer about the person who will actually turn up. |
| Licensing and insurance | Which licences does the company, the vehicle and the driver hold, and from which authority? What insurance is carried, on what basis, and can the certificate be produced? | A logo, a phrase such as fully insured, or an assurance that everything is in order. Accept the document or nothing. |
| Fatigue and hours | How are driver hours controlled on long days, overnight work and repeat bookings? Who decides that a driver has done enough, and what happens then? | There is no policy, or the policy is the driver's own judgement. On a long-distance or overnight job this is the question that matters most. |
| The operation behind the car | Who answers the telephone at three in the morning, in what country, and what authority does that person have? How are flights tracked and how long does a car wait? | An out-of-hours number that reaches an answering service which can take a message but cannot send a car. |
| Subcontracting | In which cities do you use your own cars and drivers, and in which do you pass the work to somebody else? Who is that, how were they selected, and who is responsible when it goes wrong? | Evasion. Almost every company subcontracts somewhere, and the honest ones say where and to whom without being pushed. |
| Information | What is recorded about a journey, how long is it kept, who inside the company can see it, and what happens to it when the contract ends? | A privacy policy sent as a link with nothing specific to the travel data in it. Itineraries are sensitive even when the passenger is not senior. |
Ask all six of every supplier and score the answers side by side. The pattern that emerges is usually clearer than any single response, because the companies that are strong on one area are rarely weak on the rest.
The one that is always fudged
Employed, or introduced
The single most useful question in ground transport is whether the person driving is employed by the company you are paying, or is a self-employed driver introduced by it. Both models exist, both can be run well, and they carry very different implications for control, consistency, training and accountability. What you are entitled to is a clear answer rather than a careful one.
Listen for the shape of the reply. A company that says it employs its chauffeurs in two cities and arranges cars through known operators everywhere else is telling you something precise and checkable. A company that answers a question about employment with a sentence about standards is answering a different question, and you should ask it again.
For the record, and so that you can measure us against the same test: Odyssey owns and runs its own cars and employs its chauffeurs in London and Manchester. Everywhere else, cars are arranged through operators we know, and the responsibility for that arrangement stays with us rather than being passed along with the booking. See the Odyssey standard and our global network.
Evidence
Ask for documents, not adjectives
Every item below is a thing a serious supplier can produce, usually the same day. The request itself is a test, and the speed of the response tells you as much as the contents.
- The operator licence, the vehicle licences and a sample driver licence, from the authority that issues them
- The insurance certificate, in the name of the company you are contracting with, covering the class of use you are buying
- A written policy on driver hours, breaks and long-distance work, with the name of the person who applies it
- The out-of-hours escalation route, written down, with the authority each level actually holds
- A written incident procedure: what happens, who is told, how quickly, and what you receive afterwards
- A data retention statement specific to journey records, not a general privacy notice
- A named list of the cities where the company's own people drive, and the arrangement everywhere else
- A confidentiality agreement the company is willing to sign without a negotiation, at company and at individual level
Building it in
Turning the answers into a programme
- 01
Write down what counts as an in-policy car
Most organisations have a policy for flights and hotels and nothing for ground. Two paragraphs naming the approved arrangement, the exceptions and who may authorise them removes most of the risk immediately.
- 02
Decide what a traveller does when it fails
At two in the morning in a city they do not know, a traveller needs one number and one instruction. If the answer is work it out and claim it back, the policy does not exist in any useful sense.
- 03
Close the booking channel
A policy that can be bypassed by an app on a personal phone will be, and the journeys you cannot see are the ones you cannot assure. Make the compliant route the easy route or expect to be ignored.
- 04
Review with real data once a year
Ask for a year of journeys by city, by hour and by traveller, and look at where the out-of-hours and long-distance work actually is. It is almost never where the policy assumed it would be.
Abroad
The questions change once you cross a border
Very few ground transport companies own cars and employ drivers in every country they serve, and the ones that claim to are usually describing a network of partners in a more flattering way. That is not in itself a problem. What matters is whether you know it is happening, who the local company is, how they were chosen, how often that is reviewed, and who carries the responsibility when a car does not arrive in a city three time zones away.
Licensing, insurance and what a local supplier means by the same English words differ enormously by country, and an assurance given in London does not travel automatically. Ask specifically how the standard is checked abroad rather than assumed, and ask what happens to an incident that occurs there: who investigates it, who tells you, and in what form.
For travellers going somewhere genuinely difficult, the ground transport supplier is rarely the right party to be assessing the risk. That belongs with a security adviser, and the transport is then fitted to whatever they conclude. Our guide to what security-trained driving means explains where that line sits and why the order matters.
Our answers
We would rather answer these properly than in a brochure
We complete supplier questionnaires, security reviews and procurement documents as part of a proposal, and we are glad to be asked the hard versions of the questions above by the person who actually has to sign something off. Ask us directly and the answer comes from the person who can give it, with the documents attached.
Questions we are asked about this
From travel and risk teams
Is ground transport really a duty of care issue?
It is the part of a trip where a traveller is most exposed and least supervised: tired, alone, in an unfamiliar place, in a vehicle chosen by somebody else. Most programmes assure the flight in detail and the car not at all.
What is the single most revealing question?
Whether the driver is employed by the company or introduced by it, and in which cities each applies. Everything else follows from the answer, and the way it is answered tells you a great deal on its own.
How do we compare suppliers whose answers are structured differently?
Ask all of them the same six areas above, in the same order, and ask each to quote the same twelve months of your own real journeys. Headline rates are not comparable; your own travel is.
Our travellers just use an app. Is that a problem?
It is the part of the programme you cannot see. Late arrivals, long distances, lone travellers and anything where a record and an accountable supplier matter are where it shows. See chauffeur service or a premium app for the full comparison.
Will you complete our supplier questionnaire?
Yes, as part of a proposal, including security and data sections. Send it with the travel pattern you want quoted and we will return both together.
Can you tell us your insurance and vetting position now?
We will set it out in writing with the documents, to the person who needs it, rather than publishing figures on a web page that would date. Ask and you will get the current position.
For travel and risk teams
Send us your questionnaire
Send the document and a representative month or year of travel, and we will return the completed questionnaire and a proposal against your own journeys. If you would rather talk it through first, the right person will call you back.
Prefer to talk? +44 2030 048300 or WhatsApp, at any hour.
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