Hi and welcome Carl
Was for some years in charge of a busy mainly pool car fleet for which we bought cars outright and put typically 2 to 3 thousand miles a week on each up to immense mileages. The garage hand changed oils and filters every 10000 miles or so and we avoided main dealers for routine servicing and non warranty repairs doing it at a trusted family run back street garage for about a third of main dealer prices. It did involve a little regular capital outlay to buy new vehicles but overall still think it was far the most frugal way.
Buying new vehicles? - that’s perhaps best left to hard nosed purchasing dept colleagues, but found it best to keep an open mind about dealers to buy from and make of vehicle and make it very clear to the dealers that you want their best price for a whatever model with fleet discount. There are I believe national brokers who will source vehicles at maximum possible discounts but we operated a policy of supporting the local economy so didn’t bother and don’t think we lost out by doing so. Shopping around multiple local dealers this way usually resulted in a wide spectrum of fleet discounts on offer and towards final purchase it’s usually possible to play one dealer off against others by asking them to better cheaper quotes.
I suppose partially what I’m trying to say here is that small variations in the purchase price of the vehicle have only an infinitesimal influence on the overall cost per mile of operating it compared with how you undertake the latter. And of course you have to consider end of life residual vehicle disposal values - we sold most ex fleet cars ourselves to employees by sealed tender : theyknew them and the regular maintenance given to them well and were more than happy to pay far more for them than the auctions and of course we avoided auctioneer commissions etc
PS
Afterthought Carl - another option may be if you want to be really really frugal and don’t do big mileages in your fleet might be to avoid brand new vehicles entirely and buy ex rental etc fairly new ones at one of the big auctions for usually fractions of brand new prices. Needs a certain amount of trade skill and knowledge to get the right ones, but there are motor trade people around who’d be happy to do it on your behalf for a modest (usually cash!) sum.
And you’ll save the most money buying vehicles yourselves by as I said keeping your options as open as possible re actual makes and just going for the ones that offer the best overall value for money. This means that you resist ‘user-chooser’ policies in favour of ‘you’ll get what we decide to give you’
