EuroShell card for Euro help
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• Europe Net, the European 24-hour truck rescue service, is teaming up with Shell to enable hauliers to pay for Continental breakdown with the EuroShell fuel card.
The service could include paying fines for hauliers accused of road traffic offences and talking to the police on their behalf if there is a language problem.
At the same time Europe Net is poised to extend its operation into the former Eastern bloc countries — Czechoslavakia joined this summer and Poland, Hungary and Russia are expected to follow. It aims to reach 20 countries.
AA-BRS Fleet Rescue is Europe Net's UK partner. Managing director Ray Combs says Europe Net will retain a 51% shareholding in the Eastern European operations to ensure control if any appointed agents prove unreliable. "We have had problems with some partners," Combs reports.
He says existing Europe Net shareholders are prepared to invest cash in Eastern Europe "when the time is right".
The operation has set up a head office in Strasbourg and appointed Bernard Hoeltzel managing director. Using a computer program written by AA-BRS, Hoeltzel is linking partners throughout Europe, enabling information to be shared simultaneously by all European control centres.
If a UK haulier breaks down on the Continent, he contacts AA-BRS in Birmingham and his details are sent to the nearest European agent. "Using Europe Net he can be confident he will not be ripped off by a local garage," says Combs.
The French operation was set up seven years ago by Richard Herber, who says that an early problem was persuading French garages to become serviceminded. "In France when you phoned a garage, it would try to find an excuse not to help," says Herber, who now has 130 agents in France backed by 4,000 parts suppliers.
Europe Net was founded in 1980 by German operation Service 24 which has breakdown contracts with several manufacturers, including Daimler-Benz and Daf. It handles 55,000 breakdowns a year and operates through 120 German garages. Director Reinhold Graff says more will be needed eventually.
"The future is linked to new roads and the increasing traffic from Eastern Europe," says Graff, who claims his service reaches a breakdown in one hour on average.