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Cardlff Brothers, based in Rutherglen, Glasgow, runs 20 artics and 35 skeletals on container work throughout Scotland and Northern England. Director Douglas Cardiff told C•that they'd only just started using the software when we called but it seemed to be working out well. "We wanted something to manage our fuel with and keep track of our maintenance," he says. "We looked at a few other packages but this one looked good for the money."
Cardiff particularly likes having total fuel consumption figures per vehicle and per group of vehicles, as well as lifetime and userdefined period analyses. "It has given us a couple of surprises," he adds. "A couple of vehicles were doing better than we thought, and some were doing worse." He agrees that entering data for the fleet at the outset was a bit time-consuming, "but once we got the first couple done, it wasn't too difficult after that".
The main benefits of the system, he believes, will be "keeping tighter control of our fuel casts and maintenance, not missing tacho inspections and keeping better track of our drivers".
• Richmondshire District Council Contracting Services runs nine heavy refuse and street cleaning vehicles and a fleet of around 60 small vans used in its various parks and gardens, street cleaning, finance and building maintenance activities. Refuse collection supervisor Julie Toombes is one of two people who use Easy-Fleet. She sums it up as useful but sometimes hard to use.
"Overall it's very useful but it's not as simple a system as some," she says. "We've had it for a year and we can get it to do whatever we want it to—but I have had to call the technical support desk on occasion." How has that been "Excellent. They were very very helpful and nice to deal with. They always solved the problem, too," she says. "We looked at a few packages and Chevin's seemed to be very reasonable for the money we were willing to spend."
Toombes finds the diary functions particularly useful and uses the software to help keep track of fuel and tyre costs as well as vehicle maintenance reporting.
• Project Telecom of Newark, Notts, has a fleet of 90 cars and small vans. Group administration manager Fiona Sage is the sole user of the system: "We use it to monitor maintenance costs and I've also put in all the drivers' details, including driving licence information. But we're only just starting to use the fuel module to monitor expenditure and fuel consumption."
She reports that the software is already proving useful and isn't too hard to use: "It's easy to use once you know what you're doing. I'm not the most computer-literate user and there have been times when I haven't known how to do something, but whenever I've had to ask Chevin, they have been good." Overall, she concludes, it's good value far money: "I'd give it seven out often."