SSP Car Pool turbo charges for COVID-19 response

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the SSP Car Pool team has supercharged its fleet capacity and vehicle response times to meet the urgent demands of the Victorian Government’s state-wide COVID-19 response.

The demand for car rentals for COVID-19 response teams across the State quickly escalated. At the peak of the pandemic, vehicle demand was nearly three times the levels of SSP’s base fleet capacity with a total of 450 vehicles deployed.

To meet this demand, the SSP Car Pools team accessed its backup surge arrangements with commercial rental car operators. This included buses for hotel quarantine transfers and cars for authorised officers assigned to various COVID-19 regulation compliance checks throughout the State.

SSP’s car pool main customers during this time included COVID-19 Quarantine Victoria, the Department of Justice and Community Safety, the Department of Health, Commercial Passenger Vehicles Victoria, and Bushfire Recovery Victoria, to name a few.

SSP’s Car Pools Manager, Bob Penter is proud of the SSP Car Pool team’s responsiveness and efforts to meet the transport needs of these departments and agencies to support their role in responding to COVID-19.

“The key to the team’s ability to achieve this outcome and have vehicles ready to meet this exceptional demand has been their customer focus,” said Bob. “The SSP Car Pools team have put in a massive effort and went above and beyond to make sure our customers had the transport they needed at the time they needed it,” he said.

More recently, vehicle demand has returned to usual levels and the Car Pool team are ‘gearing up’ for business as Victorian Public Service (VPS) staff continue to transition back to worksites more frequently.

The SSP Car Pool service is available to VPS staff who are authorised to drive and book a vehicle through their home department or agency. The SSP Car Pool office is based in the Central Business District and open from 7am to 5pm on weekdays. Car bookings can be made through the secure car booking system.