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Daft are blooming in Norwich
Page 80
Page 81
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While Norwich City fanatics at Ford & Slater might mourn the dealership's relocation from a site next to the soccer club's Carrow Road ground to purpose-built premises on Norwich's outskirts, you won't hear their colleagues complaining.
The Daf and LDV dealership's sparkling new home, a two-acre site on the Longwater Business Park,just off the A47, boasts all the latest facilities. Representing a £2.1m investment, it houses an 850m2 workshop with two pits (one 27m long, the other 18.6m long) and a parts department with £300,000 worth of stock and a state-of-the-art £30,000 mechanised high-density storage system.
Good news We had our official opening this month although in fact we moved in last September," says dealer principal Keith Spurway. The opening is good news for the area, given the collapse of Crane Fruehauf a few miles down the road.
Twenty-three of the dealership's 47 full-time employees are kept busy in the workshop servicing and repairing vans and trucks."We run a four shift system — three shifts Monday to Friday, plus a weekend shift," says Spurway "We've got 11 people in our parts department, including our delivery drivers, and we carry over 15,000 lines, We've got three parts vans making twice-daily deliveries all over Norfolk.
"The other members of the workforce are engaged in management, administration,or sales. So far as sales are concerned our area of influence, is the county of Norfolk. On the workshop side we pull business in from quite a distance — our customers can be based 15-20 miles away — and we can offer a collection and delivery service.
"We open the workshop from 6am on a Monday round the clock until 6pm on a Saturday. On Sunday we're open 7arn to 6pm, and we sell 800 to 1,000 hours of workshop time a week.We're looking to increase that. We've got the ability to service 11 vehicles at a tirne,so we could double the number of technicians we employ before we exceeded the building's physical limits. At present, however, all we're looking for is another technician per shift. "It's not easy to recruit technicians though. Schools seem to have this perception that our industry only requires people with good manual skills, with academic ability coming second.While it's true that we need people who are competent with their hands, they've also got to be intelligent enough to understand the latest technology found on trucks.
"At present we're writing to 35 careers advisers at schools with a view to attracting thii year's school leavers to our apprentice scheme.All of our trainee truck technicians go through the Daf Trucks National Apprentice Programme, which involves a residential training course at City of Bristol College."
The dealership's workshop equipment includes a Maha roller brake tester with a load simulation system in the pit area.-We've got deSignated status from VOSA for testing."
As well as the pits. the workshop offers a five-tonne two-post lift for light CVs as well as two sets of four mobile column lifts with an 11tonne capacity.
There's a bay equipped for the safe servicing of petrol tankers and other Haichem vehicles. "We can calibrate tachographs too, using a system supplied by Siemens," says Spurway.
Ford & Slater Daf Norwich sells around 100 new trucks a year. "We're getting a 22% mai-ket share," says Spurway, who's hoping the new location and facilities will boost volume and market share. "I think a lot of hauliers will be drawn to us."
Most customers are smallto medium-sized operators; Norfolk isn't really big-fleet territory "That said, we've recently had some success with Dutch-based operator Frans Maas. Its UK head office happens to be in Great Yarmouth, and we've just supplied it with 17 tractor units. We've also supplied Matthews International, a major operator, with 15 tractors."
Tractor units represent around 70% of the dealership's sales. "Most of them are 95XFs, with Space Cab models rated at 430bhp the most popular.That reflects the fact that most of our haulier customers have to travel outside the county to service the contracts they've got. There's an even balance between 6x2s and 4x2s. Many of our customers opt for the latter because they're on Continental work. "We're also pretty successful with the LF though, with customers who want to use it on local distribution work."
Lead times But anybody who wants a 95XF faces a bit of a wait."We're talking about lead times of 18 to 20 weeks. Given this situation a lot of buyers are asking us for a used 95XF up to three years old with a view to trading it in when their new one arrives.There is, of course, a shortage of late-registered examples, but at least this keeps residual values high.
"We sell 50-80 used trucks annually, 60% of which are tractors.We should be able to sell more now because we've got a better display area than we had at our previous premises, with ample hard-standing. We're better located too, not far from the Royal Norfolk Showground.We also put vehicles on the Ford & Slater website, and this allows us to trade with customers further afield. It's updated every week with pictures of our used stock."
Ford & Slater also operates sites at Leicester, Coventry Lincoln,Peterborough, Kings Lynn, Ipswich, Newark, Donington and Wymondham . A family-owned business with a £90m-plus turnover, and one of the UK's largest distributors of Dafs and LDVs,it employs more than 360 people.
Spurway reckons the launch of the Maxus will give LDV a major boost:"We should sell getting on for 200 in its first full year—we sold about 125 Convoys and Pilots in 2004.
"In our heyday we took a 14% local market share with LDV and sold around 400 units annually.
"Our share has now diminished to nearer 4.5%, and we'd like to see Maxus get back to around 6-7% of local sales in its first year. We've got our eyes set on reaching at least a 10% share in the next couple of years." mi