In a series of stories over the next few weeks, Finance Week will draw together articles giving advice and recommendations on what you should consider when running a fleet or simply paying your employees' mileage.

As our series on improving working capital shows, managing every area of expense and understanding how to do something in a different way, can bring huge financial and operational benefits to the bottom line.

The current realities facing the fleet and car hire industry are often not reflected by the puffery of the advertising, as this article will outline. Managing company cars and the fleet more efficiently, understanding some of the pressures on the industry and how your company might benefit, is the aim of a series of articles to appear in the coming weeks.

Fact: Did you know that the UK's vehicle leasing sector is on course for its biggest shake-up for over 20 years?

Those looking for new fleet deals or deciding to go this route for the first time, ought to know that the industry is facing serious problems and the way it is currently structured will inevitably change. This may affect the efficiency of how your fleet is maintained, the next contract negotiation might be with a different company altogether and your charges are likely to rise.

Like every part of UK business credit terms are tightening. They are likely to tighten even further in the leasing sector as a number of banks look set to offload their leasing business. The reality is that it has always been an industry that is cash hungry and had a poor return-on-investment.

The two largest UK leasing companies (with 400,000 vehicles under management against 100,000 for their competitor) are Lloyds TSB Autolease and Lex Vehicles (owned by HBOS).

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that neither of these firms will be cash-rich and the low ROI nature of their business does not look like a good deal for struggling banks. Industry sources have already seen Lex tighten deal terms even with large, rich multi-national companies. One could speculate that Monopolies & Mergers have grounds to examine the new structure of the British leasing industry, but so precarious is British business it is unlikely to rattle any cages in the near term.

More pressing for leasing companies is their own working capital position. While there have already been interest rate falls these are not passed on to customers. In part companies are struggling to recover some money - in recent weeks car hire firms have seen the average value of one-year old vehicles plummet by £1,000.

That leaves a big hole in the end-of-year books.

In the coming weeks Finance Week will examine various pros and cons for running a fleet, tax and cost advantages of following the green brick road and what to look out for when the leasing companies take their vehicles back.