A commercial vehicle service centre just been opened at national transport and logistics solutions provider ATL’s newly opened Midlands Hub, just off the A50 near Derby. The new facility integrates the highest standards of workshop practice with state-of-the-art business and fleet management systems.
Acting as a sister company to ATL, Haywood Commercials will maintain ATL’s fleet of approximately 100 commercial vehicles and 150 trailers as well as providing the highest level of services to third party commercial clients.
According to workshop manager George Haywood, pictured, as well as expanding and modernising its engineering facilities, investing in the latest IT and software systems has also been a priority and this has involved a full review of available software for managing the operation. Haywood selected software from Freeway Fleet Systems to underpin the new service.
“We looked extensively at the leading fleet maintenance systems and although many did certain tasks very well it became clear that only one offered the comprehensive functionality we needed. It was a system from Freeway that met our needs and the system has clear advantages for operators like us that need to optimise efficiency and productivity with a fully integrated all-in-one system.”
ATL use Stirling’s transport management system and this is being run in parallel to Freeway initially as roll out of Freeway is underway. The two systems interface so fleet operations always have visibility of vehicle availability and fleet data is synchronised to minimise any secondary data entry.
“The fact that it could interact and easily accept data from both internal and external systems was an important additional benefit of Freeway,” added the Group’s System Administrator, Jamie Norvaisa.
“Cost control is vitally important for any operator these days and we knew we’d have to up our game when providing a competitive commercial service,” says Haywood. “Freeway gives us absolute control as we can clearly see all our costs right down to shillings and pence. It also means we can maximise our efficiency and with performance reports generated by the system we’ll be able to fine tune everything to optimise use of our resources.”
Compliance is an important and Freeway provides a ready-made solution for Earned Recognition, he adds. “We see Freeway’s Earned Recognition software feature as a really big asset as it means we will be fully compliant with this DVSA scheme. However, it also means we can offer an Earned Recognition compliant service to others which could prove key to attracting commercial customers; they can attain recognition without having to worry about the process and software required.”