Travel Allowance For Getting To Work

[VocalNeal]

One of my staff claims he pays 3500 / month for fuel to drive to and from our office, he drives about 40k a day and wants to know if I can "help" him. This was raised after he was told it is not acceptable to take the company vehicle home after a job and he must return it to the office every night. This after they stopped off at home one night on the way back from Pattaya and then having got away with it once, the same week took it home from a job in Pingklao, when they almost had to pass the office to get there.

Is anyone elso "helping" their staff with travel allowance in light of increasing fuel prices. He does bring another worker with him.

Edited April 17, 2008 by VocalNeal

[Chang_paarp]

Is he worth a pay raise?

I think he should look at the cost of driving, 40km a day = 800km/month (5 day week). At 35B/litre of petrol that is 100L of gas for 800km Not very efficient, even less so if the vehicle is deisel with the cheaper fuel.

Give him a bus timetable or tell him to get some thing from the other person.

Alternatively ask him how much he would pay the company to let him to take the work car home. Use this figure as a negotiating starting point.

[raro]

Had a similar issue with someone who used to work with me. He had an old worn-out BMW with a high consumption and high maintenenace.

He agreed on the terms and conditions in the emplyoment contract which stated very clearly that only for business trips the costs would be re-imbursed on a case-by-case basis. His understanding of a business trip was the way to work which it is definatly not. I refused to pay him any extra and pointed out that me (his boss) can only afford a Honda Jazz and if he thinks he needs a BMW he should look for a better paid job somewhere else...NB, he had a very good salary with us considering his backgrund and abilities. Nevertheless, he left due to face issues.

Another sales staff I used to have tried to make an extra with fake fuel and highway bills she collected whereever. I asked her to record for each and every trip the time it starts, odometer read-out at start and end, prupose of the trip and so on. Make it as complicated as possible. They will NOT do the effort to fill it in and chances are you will never hear about it again.

[soundman]

We have many problems with staff running personal erands on company time and fuel. Sometimes the extra distance on the odometre is easy to spot, other times, dam_n near impossible.

Another scam to be aware of, is the truck drivers siphoning ten or twenty litres of fuel and selling it on the road.

The way this scam works is there will usually be areas on trucking routes where young boys stand on the edge of the road waving a red lighted torch or lantern. Once the truck stops, the boy will collect a twenty litre plastic container he has hidden somewhere nearby, siphon off the diesel and pay the truck driver in cash. About 400B or twenty litres is the going rate at the moment.

Soundman.

[VocalNeal]

We have many problems with staff running personal erands on company time and fuel. Sometimes the extra distance on the odometre is easy to spot, other times, dam_n near impossible.

Another scam to be aware of, is the truck drivers siphoning ten or twenty litres of fuel and selling it on the road.

The way this scam works is there will usually be areas on trucking routes where young boys stand on the edge of the road waving a red lighted torch or lantern. Once the truck stops, the boy will collect a twenty litre plastic container he has hidden somewhere nearby, siphon off the diesel and pay the truck driver in cash. About 400B or twenty litres is the going rate at the moment.

Soundman.

SM,

Been busy and just read your post. LOL In Indonesia company trucks used to stop at roadside Cat Houses. Whilst the driver was inside enjoying the company of a lady someone would syphon out 20l of diesel as payment!!

Just conveted truck to LPG. Not easy but maybe someone even has a way to "syphon" that out.

[DragonQuest]

I get full 100% reinbursment for my taxi to and from work. Which is very rare, many companies dont pay.

[jrbkk64]

We pay 4,500 THB/month to managers and 3,000 THB/month to Ass. Managers. We used to have a distance based allowance for all permanent staff (> 400 staff), however I decided to stop that because found out that many were giving false addresses. Too much hassle to check. Since then we pay a fixed allowance per working day. This allowance amounts to about 60% of the average of the previous arrangement. Nobody complained!!

On our trucks we have locked the lid on the diesel tank. We only use one gas station and they keep the keys!

Cheating like this happens on a very very large scale in Thailand and everybody seems to know about and thinks it is "normal". The perpetrators are mostly of the lower social classes and historically these classes have always taken from the "richer" classes in Thailand. Centuries ago it was the same in Europe!