Concept order a brand new fleet of vehicles

In June 2019, Concept decided to upgrade its fleet of collection vehicles. The new fleet of five vehicles — comprising of medium wheel based Mercedes Sprinter Vans— is responsible for transporting more than 1500 metric tonnes of IT and electronic equipment over 1000 locations in the UK.

David Collier, Operations Director at Concept, says the company had thre vendors that supplied vehicles prior to the latest fleet development.

“We would then maintain the vehicles, including servicing and maintenance work,” he continues. “We then decided to do away with that system and instead retain one service provider that supplies all our needs. Other costs including fuel, congestion charges, road tolls and more importantly emission charges when going in to London, meant it becomes more cost effective to have brand new vehicles”

“We invited bidders through a request for proposals, and the entire process took us close to six months to sort out,” he adds.

Following the tendering process, Concept have awarded a three-year contract to one supplier for the operation. The vendor, David says, is responsible for servicing and maintenance of the vans.

He adds: “We also lease passenger cars and we are also looking into the possibility of introducing hybrid and electric cars, and by next year, we hope to have achieved this”

For Concept, it made more sense to lease vehicles than to purchase them, David explains: “The prospect of owning our fleet would involve a fuel management system, and not to forget, we would also need a workshop to maintain these vehicles. Essentially, we would need an entire division within the company to run transportation operations. It’s not something we are ready to take on at the moment even though we are an approved VOSA site”

All vehicles in the new fleet are brand new and fully air-conditioned, and feature comfortable interiors. Some units are even equipped with specialist tools that help teams with on-site related tasks, including a Shredder and HDD Crusher.

The vehicles also have a fleet a management system, complete with GPS, vehicle tracking, and state of the art camera technology and CCTV cameras and access controls which will simplify the entry and exit of vehicles. Hence, the staff which are vetted to SC (Security Clearance) Standards and the vehicles will give our customers complete peace of mind during the transportation of their data”

Mark Wilding, says that hopefully feedback about the new fleet from our clients and staff has been positive, he adds: “We couldn’t ask for anything better – our clients will be happy with the new fleet, but most importantly, our staff arrive fresh at the site and ready for work. This will ultimately reflect in their performance and our key performance indicator (KPI) scores.”

The fleet hopes to arrive by the end of July.