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PERPLEXING TIMES AHEAD
Page 56
Page 57
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Hill Hire is the official supplier of the trailers that CM uses in its roadtests. At a recent handover we caught up with operations director Adam Fairbotham for an update on activity at the rental giant.
With an annual fleet order for trucks and trailers of up to 1,000 units, Hill Hire is among the UK's biggest buyers.With so much at stake, the company spends a lot of time poring over specifications and quotations before making a buying decision.And with such demanding customers as road transport operators, it's crucial the right products are bought for the right applications.
So when Hill Hire operations director Adam Fairbotham passes comment on the issues facing truck and trailer buyers, it's worth taking note. In our experience, although his suppliers might tell you otherwise. Fairbotham is a quietly spoken, understated man who thinks carefully before expressing an opinion.
Few driver cards
Digital tachographs and the debate between EGR and SCR as the best way to meet the Euro-4 emissions legislation are the two main issues currently facing truck buyers. With the former. Fairbotham sees some initial problems. "This legislation is going to be tough to manage," he says."We're finding very few companies have got the driver cards, which will make it extremely difficult for us with regard to our spot rental fleet." This issue will sort itself out over time as the industry catches up with the legislation— but, like Fairbotham, CM can see a lot of teething troubles over the next six months or more.
Regarding Euro-4, Hill Hire is equally perplexed. "The jury's still out over which way to go in order to meet the new legislation," says Fairbotham. Hill Hire is a big user of Mercedes, Daf, Iveco and MAN products, which means it has an interest in both EGR and SCR camps."It's very difficult for us to plan.We're ordering in the region of 1,000 vehicles and it's important we get the decision right. Most of what we want for this year we've taken as pre-Euro-4 product We'll be taking some Euro-4 vehicles for June delivery in order to demonstrate the new technology to ourselves and our customers.The manufacturers have raised the prices for Euro-4 product, but unless we can demonstrate efficiency gains, convincing the customers may prove tough.
We get the feeling that Hill Hire will be monitoring the initial Euro-4 vehicles very closely, with loyalties stretched to breaking if the vehicles don't match up.
For Hill Hire, customer satisfaction is the key objective and its service offer, like the vehicles it specs, has to reflect that Hill Hire has been investing heavily in its service network over the past 12 months or so to ensure the service centres are as close to the customers as possible.
Opening up markets
"The closer we are to the customers, the more likely we are to get their business and retain it," says Fairbotham. "It also serves to open up markets we've never had before." Hill Hire has added five new sites to the network in the past year (Edinburgh. Stockton, Castleford, Ipswich and Southampton) on top of the Dm invested in the Avonmouth site and new workshop facilities at Motherwell near Glasgow.
The Hill Hire fleet consists of approximately 17,000 trailers and 6,000 trucks. Recently,it has been increasing its activity in the contract-hire sector as this balances out some of the natural peaks and troughs of the spot rental market and Fairbotham is satisfied with the current balance. He's cautiously optimistic that business levels will stay strong, but believes that flexibility is the key.
"The customer is expecting more and more flexibility in this sector," he concludes,"and we'll have to be more flexible if we're going to win and retain future business." •