Throwaway for obvious reasons.
I work for a large fortune 500 company in the Midwest USA where most employees’ have company vehicles, or access to them, for work use. My job was described to me as 50% fieldwork and 50% office work (although its probably more like 80% field and 20% office work), I work as an engineer (on salary) and I have a B.S. in engineering, as do my coworkers. I’m trying to be as vague as I can but I feel that is important. When I was hired on, the company had 1 vehicle for every 2 employees in my department that we shared via a sign out sheet. I was told we had vehicles to check out to use for work or if you wanted to drive your own car you could and be paid mileage.
Over the past 6 months that vehicle count has dwindled to 1 vehicle for all workers to share between more than 10 employees. We had half taken and were told they would be replaced as their lease was up, that obviously never happened. My job often involves needing to access active construction job sites, off road on large plots of open land, gravel roads, frequently needing higher ground clearance or 4-wheel drive, often times we are working and parking next to the roadway with active traffic. Now we are told we have to drive our own vehicles and be paid the IRS standard mileage rate for miles driven.
We drive, a lot. Although not necessarily a large amount of miles driven for the time we are in our cars, though this varies and there are times where you drive 120 miles round trip. We drive frequently in town, in stop and go traffic, where 4 miles takes 30 minutes. There are days where I don’t see my office and am in my car, between job sites, idling in traffic all day long but only total 40 miles driven. So it's the worst driving for wear and tear, fuel economy, etc. We also have to be out in bad weather, rain, snow, or shine. We’re field engineers at the end of the day.
I’ve been advised by my (pension receiving) coworkers and superiors to get a new car or a different car for work. I do not have money for a second car nor do I want one. I have retirement to save for where most coworkers have pensions and are close to retirement, the last thing I need is a car loan for a second car. My primary car is paid for and has been for long enough that I can’t imagine having a car payment every month.
I feel as if we above many other employees should have company vehicles, as we are the face of the company. We meet customers and are the first line of face-to-face contact. We deal with homeowners, business owners, developers, and contractors alike from simple small requests to working along side multi million dollar projects. These customers consistently question me on my vehicle and they constantly ask where my (company) truck is. It’s embarrassing.
I’m incredibly frustrated, I fear I’m not thinking clearly and wanted to get some objective outside opinions and try to gain some clarity before frustration turns to saying something regretful at work. I feel as if now I’m burdened with the risks and costs to do my job and without any ample compensation for doing so. I should also note, we also have interns that are still in engineering school and they are now being told they need to drive their personal car for their assigned work as well.
What is reasonable moving forward? Is this added expense tax deductible? Would that even matter for a single person whom does not itemize as is?
Is it out of the question to ask for a raise to cover the added expense and liability? I feel as though if i were being hired on today and they told me I was going to need to use my personal car for work that I would have tried to negotiate a higher salary. I've heard multiple supervisors/managers say to not tell my insurance and don't mention that you're working if I'm in an accident while driving for work. I know that this is ridiculous to say the least and my insurance needs to know that I am driving for work, occasionally transporting other employees for work, and my yearly mileage amount will likely triple from what it previously was. I've put 55k miles on my car in 9 years, I generally didn't drive my car a lot before now and will now have to put aside more money for looming maintenance that will need to be done more frequently.
Thanks for any insight or thoughts on this. It's been an incredibly frustrating week for all of us after management announced this change.
Submitted January 31, 2018 at 09:40PM by throw_away_1230 http://ift.tt/2BHCa32