LIVERY AWARDS HARBORNE GROUP
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• The Harborne Group has moved to 22.2m premises, taken on a Renault truck franchise and introduced a new look for the company — all in 12 months. And this distribution, truck rental and contract-hire firm, based in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, won our 1989 livery award for vehicles up to 7.5 tonnes. It has spent 246,000 on designing and applying its new vinyl transfer livery.
The livery comes in two versions — one is a black and white logo on a red background for its 26 distribution vehicles; the other is black and red lettering on white for its 200-strong rental fleet. Its most striking aspect is a letter H orbited by an arrow. This gives the design movement, says director Chris Stairs.
Stairs wanted to come up with a design which would work on both red and white backgrounds, the existing colours of the two divisions. It also had to look as good on a 3.5-tonne van as it would on an artic, because Harborne's rental fleet comes in all sizes.
It cost the company 212,000 for Milton Keynes firm Fir Tree Design to come up with the livery. Fir Tree was one of six firms which put in tenders for between .22,000 to 250,000.
At the time Fir Tree quoted 2500 to put the livery on to each trailer and 270 for a tractive unit.
Harborne's previous livery was low-key and traditional, says Stairs. But following a management buyout in 1986, the company wanted to introduce a more modern image. So far, the livery has been applied to about half its fleet, but will not re-livery its trucks which are older than E-reg.
The company's new depot officially opened this spring. It landed the Renault dealership almost by accident. Before being approached by Renault it had been talking to ERE The group's distribution fleet includes ERFs, Scanias, Volvos and Mercedes but no Renaults. This will not cause a credibility problem with any of its customers, says Stairs. "Harborne Commercials will operate autonomously. We won't move automatically to all Renaults. The dealership will have to compete."
It has 12 tractive units and 40 trailers working for Tarmac, moving floor beams on a five-year contract. It also runs a contract-hire division with 135 vehicles, which all run in customers' colours. Li by Murdo Morrison