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Furniture Village is one of the UK’s most successful chains of home furnishing superstores and it plans to match the existing outstanding quality of its home delivery service with one of the greenest fleets available
Words: Paul Collins
Starting in 1989 with a single store in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, Furniture Village’s original philosophy of “Quality without compromise – value without equal” has seen it grow rapidly in the past two decades and expand to 39 stores nationwide.
The company’s desire to match the quality of its home delivery and installation service with the high quality of the furnishings it sells prompted it to take the delivery operation in-house in 2005. So, after examining transportation solutions being offered by various providers, Furniture Village was impressed the most by Ryder’s passion for making the Furniture Village home-delivery business the best there is. As a result, the company awarded Ryder a national contract to provide a leet of 3.5-tonne and 7.5-tonne trucks, thus providing homedelivery vehicles for every single UK store.
“We pride ourselves on having one of the best homedelivery services in the UK today, which we call the white glove service,” says Steve Morrison, Furniture Village’s logistics controller. “This offers to fully install the furniture into the customer’s home, remove all packaging and even remove the old furniture being replaced for a small additional charge.
Comfort conditions
“The ‘quality’ aspect of Furniture Village’s home-delivery service starts with the trucks that Ryder provides. Many are equipped with automatic transmission, and all are equipped with air conditioning as we believe that a comfortable driver is a happy driver and a happy driver will be in the right frame of mind to give frst-class customer service. In addition, all large vehicles have taillifts to make it easier for the uniformed delivery team to handle large items, and we provide a range of protective blankets, bags and door covers to ensure that the risk of damage to our products and the customer’s home is reduced to virtually zero.
“We provide a full installation service to customers in which all upholstery is pre-inspected and wrapped in our purpose-built quilted blue bags for added protection. Everything is placed in the room of choice, all packing is taken away, with most recycled, and the product is then fully demonstrated.” All 108 of Furniture Village’s drivers are employed by the company and it recruits individuals with excellent customer-service skills and the correct mindset. “You can always teach the right people to drive, but you can’t teach personality skills – these have to come naturally,” continues Morrison. It recently enrolled all of its drivers in the AA DriveTech programme to ensure they are Driver CPC-compliant and every single driver has now completed the ‘safe culture’ module.
“When we call to arrange a home delivery, we offer a wide range of days for delivery and deliveries are made within a two-hour time slot on the chosen day. The key to success is to ensure that the customer is happy with the delivered product and everybody leaves with a smile on their face.”
Carbon reduction
In line with its aim to not only provide the best products and quality of service, but also to demonstrate its ongoing desire to be seen as a caring company, Furniture Village has recently worked with Ryder to help further reduce the carbon footprint of its home-delivery leet. As a result, it has just added 13 new trucks to its leet with some of the most environmentally friendly speciications available.
The DAF 7.5-tonners, itted with Euro-5 EEV engines, have aerodynamic Bevan21 bodies, which reduce wind drag and provide fuel eficiencies of around 15%; the 6.5-tonne Iveco EcoDaily trucks with Bevan box bodies also feature Euro-5 EEV engines and provide the most environmentally friendly speciications in their weight class.
“We have liaised with the company, DAF, Iveco and Bevan to specify bespoke designs that would enable the company to make signiicant future reductions in its carbon footprint,” comments Bruce Howard, Ryder contract hire director. “The DAF LF45.160 EEV is already the class-leading 7.5-tonner, and so was a natural choice, while the 6.5-tonne EcoDaily, which was only launched at the start of 2010, provides signiicant operational eficiencies over previous 3.5-tonners in the leet.
“Having previously worked with Bevan to specify box bodies for the home-delivery leet, it was a natural choice for the latest trucks. While ‘standard’ bodies with cab-mounted air delectors were speciied for the Ivecos, the revolutionary Bevan21 was speciied for the DAFs. With substantial orders for 7.5-tonners already placed for delivery early in 2011, the majority of Furniture Village’s leet will then be Euro-5-compliant. This fact has not gone unnoticed by the Freight Operator Recognition Scheme, the government–run scheme that aims to improve freight delivery in London, which has awarded Furniture Village a bronze certiicate.” Furniture Village’s commitment to reducing its carbon
footprint extends beyond its truck leet and the company is also working closely with its car lease provider to reduce CO2 emissions below 140g. The entire leet is below 160g/km, but the company is working with car manufacturers to ensure all new vehicles are below the 140g/km level.
“Overall, we take our
broader responsibility extremely seriously and to this end the quality of vehicles and service we receive from Ryder perfectly matches the quality expectations we have of our own brand,” concludes Morrison. “In fact, I’d go as far as stating that Ryder has been instrumental in helping us to build our home delivery service into one of the very best in the UK.” ■