JOHNSTON, RI -When Allendale Mutual Insur­ance Company in John­ston, RI merged with three other companies in 1999 to form FM Global, Allendale Car Plan Administrator Richard Corsetti took over administration of the new fleet and was faced with the dilemma of how to combine vehicle policies and procedures of four dif­ferent companies.

The merged companies included Allendale Insur­ance (300 vehicles); Pro­tection Mutual in Chicago (100 vehicles); Arkwright Mutual in Waltham, MA (100 vehicles); and Factory Mutual in Norwood, MA (500 vehicles).

The FM Global fleet now has 930 leased cars and 450 on a Runzheimer reimbursement program.

One of the first things Corsetti and a task force of other company managers did was develop a policy and procedures manual. Among the policies devel­oped was a personal use policy in which drivers pay a certain monthly amount to the company for person­al use.

"Before, each company had different personal use fees and different ways of collecting them," Corsetti said in an interview with Automotive Fleet. "It was a challenge getting the word out that this is a new compa­ny with a new way of doing things, and a big part of com­municating that was our poli­cy and procedures manual. With the help of my man­agers, it took six weeks to de­velop the manual, and part of the development included many conference calls with other company managers on what policies should be in­cluded."

The manual was placed on the company's intranet site, which played a big part in communicating the policies to drivers. "On the intranet, drivers can fill out a form to join the car plan, and they can see all of the policies and pro­cedures," Corsetti said.

The merged companies to­gether had nine different leasing companies, with different types of leases.