FIRS to the rescue by Aan Ma r ANY YEARS of
Page 59
Page 60
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
disorganiition have left the heavy !hide recovery business with image it can do without. As a iecies, the recovery man is ewed almost universally as a psy-like figure who charges io much, uses suspect equiplent, and who can be guaranied to render a vehicle useless y the time he has finished ,wing it.
However, this sweeping meralisation ignores the great ill employed by many good en in the business, although ten police forces find that their 'its of approved recovery )erators are patchy in their iverage of the country.
It was this poor image which ompted British Road Services launch its BRS Rescue itional breakdown club two ars ago. With 100 recovery !hides spread around 67 of its 30 branches, a series of gional workshops, and a basic 'st-aid service to effect adside repairs at all branches, e infrastructure was already ere.
In the words of BRS Rescue introller Kieran Fielding: Nhen you have that kind of frastructure, a lot of it is ider-employed. We saw an iportunity to improve the use these resources.
The main aim of the BRS ?scue service is to have covery and repair facilities ailable 24 hours a day, every ,y of the year. This is achieved rgely by the service's mmunications centre in Birmgham which is under the
charge of chief engineer John Gleed. It now has nine telephone operators answering calls for assistance and a staff of three clerical employees whose numbers are boosted at times of stress.
Two-way radios enable the control centre to direct recovery vehicles to the scene of a breakdown or accident as quickly as possible, and this speedy response allows three quarters of all reported breakdowns to be dealt with in less than three-and-a-half-hours_ The main fleet of recovery vehicles was built from retired heavy haulage vehicles in the BRS fleet, using winching equipment built by specialist companies. They are backed up by light service vans — all fully kitted out with tools for roadside repairs — at most other depots.
Mobile workshops which fold up into easily manoeuvred trailers have been delivered to London area depots to cope with the capital's dense traffic, While this level of coverage keeps most of the country satisfied, and increases BRS equipment's productivity, peaks and troughs and unserved areas present a problem. Rather than devote under-utilised equipment to those parts, the company's engineers have sought out over 250 private recovery agents who work within BRS's tariff.
The agents have found that their selection by BRS has worked wonders for their reputation, and Kieran Fielding is proud that it was the agents which requested "'Approved BRS Rescue Agentstickers for the sides of their vehicles.
BRS wanted desperately to blow away the image of the flyby-night recovery operator by publishing a concise and widely known scale of charges. This begins with a registration fee based on the operator's size.
. A one-vehicle operator pays 0 a year plus VAT, while an operator of over 50 vehicles pays £18 plus VAT in much the same way as a motorist pays for access to the Automobile Association's breakdown services.
Charges for actual recovery vary according to the time of day or week, whether or not the customer is a registered member, the number of man hours involved, and whether light aid or recovery vehicles are used. But all conform to the same national scale of charges.
Breakdown costs are also kept down by BRS policy of endeavouring to reduce towing to an absolute minimum. As long as the lorry driver reports accurately what is wrong with his vehicle, rescue centre can direct the correct service vehicle to the incident and effect a speedy repair. At least 70 per cent of all breakdowns are repaired on the roadside without recourse to towing.
The company does admit that its telephone system is its biggest bottleneck, and this was borne out by two customers to whom I spoke, but it plans soon to purchase a more sophisticated switchboard. In the meantime, it is doing its utmost to have burst tyres, broken windscreens, and electrical faults repaired by specialist companies who have their own networks of repair services.
On the other hand, BRS Rescue is building up its own expertise as a recoverer of overturned vehicles, and has two teams of rescue men on hand with air cushions. Like the men employed on more mundane recovery work, the air cushion men are given intensive training in the correct handling of their equipment and are not allowed to go out on any job for which they have not been trained.
, As Kieran Fielding says: "The airbag men must be dead right when they do a job. We always demonstrate their skill by doing mock recoveries at exhibitions with new vehicles. They never get a scratch on them."
He instances an air cushion job in which a meat lorry aboard an Irish ferry was overturned off Holyhead by the combination of rough sea and the pendulum effect of the hanging carcasses. An emergency squad called in from Dewsbury in Yorkshire completed the entire recovery job — despite there being a covering of oil and grease on the ferry's deck — in around four hours.
While such heroics help bring the company's activities to the industry's attention, it is the regular speedy recovery and repair work which wins custom. BRS did not set itself a target number of members, but aimed in its first six months to handle 10,000 vehicles. That figure, based on the fact that one commercial vehicle breaks down once every year, was exceeded within a month! There are now over 100,000 members of whom 90,000 are outside the National Freight Corporation.
Although all NFC vehicles are registered with BRS Rescue, they are given no priority over those from the private sector when an emergency call is received.
Among the private sector customers is the 350-vehicle International Stores fleet, which serves over 700 supermarkets and discount stores south of a line between Gainsborough and Bolton.
Transport manager Ray Elliott told me that International altered its transport arrangements over the past three years to have more vehicles running on long-distance and overnight delivery work, often using casual drivers who cannot be educated to take the same precautions as full-time staff.
In addition, many of the company's depots are not staffed at night, and emergency repairs had to be entrusted to manufacturers' own breakdown networks. Ray Elliott says: "We could never say what type of vehicle a depot was running on a particular job, so we needed someone to turn out for anything, and I mean anything. It could range from a damaged tail-lift to a ditched vehicle."
He is happy that BRS Rescue was the best possible breakdown cover available to him, as much through its simplicity as anything else. "They put two numbers inside the cab of each vehicle — the membership number and Freephone 4151 (the rescue centre number) — that is all I need."
Ray Elliott is also happy with BRS's in-house flexibility, which allows it to make BRS Truck Rental vans and tractive units available where loads need to be driven through to their destination.
Confederation of British Road Passenger Transport coaching executive Bill Webb is "rather pleased that we joined with BRS Rescue." Under CPT's Coach and Independent Bus Sector's mutual aid scheme, members are registered automatically with BRS Rescue, and have access to the same services as those available to hauliers.
CPT went to the service because of a growing list of complaints about messages which mere missed by motorway police patrols, and now has 560 CIBS members (a third of its membership) in the rescue service. Even Bill Webb was surprised to learn that 52 coaches had used the service at the end of its first two months last year.
He says his members are happy with the repair garages used by BRS, and that the next stage of the service will be to try to have a bank of spare parts and windscreens available to members of the scheme. Coaches, of course, are mw more expensive and much mo fragile than other commerci vehicles, and Bill We appreciates that BRS Reset realises this. "They assure o members that they can pull coach out of a ditch. They u: the right equipment to do it."
The only serious criticis which he has had fed back fro members is that the compar does not always send out its bil as quickly as they would lik One member was worried case he would be "blacklistec for non payment of an accou which was slow in being issue For the future, BRS Reser aims to improve its back-c rather than its front hr services. Clerical staffing increased to cope with peaks paperwork, and the telephor system is to be updated. I Kieran Fielding says: "Our ne( is not for extra roadsic equipment, but for bett communications."
He says his telephor operators gain considerable jc satisfaction from being able help people in trouble, and tIn acts as an attraction of the jo Staff recruitment should n hinder future growth of tl• rescue centre.
There can be little doubt th BRS Rescue has added a ne mantle of respectability to ti vehicle recovery business, ar one is left wondering how fi industry survived for so lor without such a national recove service. If its example is tak( up by others elsewhere in ti industry, it can only be to i overall benefit.