Awards help raise the sector's profile A revamped Motor Transport
Page 38
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
award for workshops opens the door to new players Words: Kevin Swallow In just over a month's time (3 July), the winner of the Repair and Maintenance Workshop of the Year will be announced at this year's Motor Transport Awards.
The award, sponsored by lubricant producer Total, has four businesses shortlisted: HRVS Group, Nestle UK, Pelican Engineering Company and Pullman Fleet Services.
Revamping the Dealer of the Year award recognises the growing importance aftersales and vehicle downtime plays for an operator. It also opens the door to companies that might not have considered entering or been eligible to do so before.
The finalists, picked from a very strong field, come from all corners of the repair and maintenance sector. HRVS is a MAN dealership covering parts of Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire. Under the previous award, Dealer of the Year, the company would have been an automatic entry, arguably, the only one of the current finalists to be so.
Nestle UK is an in-house workshop that looks after an extensive fleet of vehicles, and certainly would not have qualified for the award in its former guise. The same goes for Pullman Fleet Services: it is a commercial workshop, but doesn't have a franchise that would make it a traditional dealership.
Pelican Engineering is an independent Yorkshire-based dealership that has several franchises from different manufacturers — Daf, Hino and MAN. Historically, multi-franchise dealerships didn't apply to the Dealer of the Year award.
The revamped award means a host of top notch CV workshops now qualify and for those who work in the used truck section, which helps to raise the profile of the repair and maintenance sector. It also recognises the fantastic work that is done by previously overlooked workshops. •