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More and more hauliers are opting to contract out their vehicle maintenance. Steve Banner finds out why general haulier Neil Squire had no regrets about closing his workshop and handing over the maintenance of his 35-strong truck fleet.
For the past few years West Midlands ERF distributor S Jones has been running a major campaign to persuade transport companies to shut down their inhouse workshops and switch to contract maintenance.
The Aldridge-based company is well aware that longer service intervals, plus the fact that trucks are spending less time over a pit when they do put in an appearance, mean that it has to pull in more business to avoid a long-term decline in aftersales income; and its efforts are paying off.
No regrets
Neil Squire has no regrets about closing his Bloxwich, West Midlands company's own workshop and putting all his repair and maintenance out to contract. Most of it is handled by S Jones—which has a depot just three miles down the road from Squire Distribution Services—under a five-year agreement.
"Jones provides round-the-clock support," he enthuses. All we need to do is to tell them when we want our trucks, and they're ready."
He contends that the move has saved his company huge sums of money.
"I've even had our auditors go through the figures with me, and they've agreed 100% that it's the right thing to do," he says. "We've noticed too that the cost per vehicle is coming down as the gap between oil changes lengthens." As company chairman he's responsible for 35 trucks, most of which are ERFs. The rest of the fleet are Volvos, and those vehicles are looked after by Volvo distributor Hartshorne.
S Jones also services 80% of Squire Distribution's 60 trailers.
Squire says that one reason for his switch to contract maintenance was his concern that the growing sophistication of trucks— particularly the greater use of electronics— would mean that keeping the maintenance in-house would have entailed major investment in diagnostic equipment.
He also realised that his fitters would have had to be retrained to cope with the changing technology. Training can be expensive, and while a fitter is away on a course, his productive time in the workshop is lost.
Perhaps more fundamentally, however, he wanted to change his company's whole approach to business. He argues that too many hauliers suffer from what he terms 'a mechanic culture". because they don't seem to appreciate that their core activity is transporting goods, not tinkering with the vehicles that carry them.
"General haulage tends to be a bit stick-inthe-mud, a bit old-fashioned," he remarks.
Awareness that a maintenance agreement may not be renewed next time around is a good incentive for distributors to provide efficient back-up, says Squire. "They know that there are other people in the area who would be only too willing to fill up their workshops with our trucks"
Outside benefits
By contrast, in-house fitters can become lazy and complacent, he claims: "They'll go home early and leave you stuck if the local football team is playing at home. Then the next morning they'll come in and drink tea and eat their breakfast before deciding when you can have your vehicle back. They live in their own little world."
Nor does he worry that he's risking his 0licence by placing the responsibility for ensuring his trucks are fit to be on the road in the hands of a third party
"If you can't trust a quality distributor like S Jones, then who can you trust?" he asks. "OK, sometimes they let us down—but you'll never get a situation that is perfect."