MUNICIPAL HIRE
maintenance, replacement vehicles. So we’ve stuck to what we do best, we haven’t discounted and we’ve just invested in new equipment and we’ve won business as a result of work- ing hard and giving service to our clients.” Gulliver’s wouldn’t have invested in new equipment a year or two ago because of the oversupply in the market and rates coming under pressure, he notes. “Businesses then were des- perate, were scratching around to utilise their equipment and were underselling, and you go through a recession and we’ve seen a few casualties.” With the credit crunch, some com- petitors, he says, have been “found out” and now there’s a shortage of new equipment in the marketplace. “We’re quite prepared to get new equipment as long as there’s a good return on investment, which we have seen. So basically, the reces- sion, there’s less players in it and more opportunities.”
Opportunity knocks online
The company has also invested in an online compliance sys- tem, in which all the critical documentation is scanned in. Jeremiah believes it is highly innovative. “All the service sheets, legal sheets, all the documentation, compliance docu- ments, it’s all online – our customers are given a unique pass- word and any vehicle they have on hire, they can pull all that information off, which is impressive.” The information is readily accessible to Gulliver’s mobile
We’ve just invested in new equipment and we’ve won business as a result of working hard and giving service to our clients
“
technicians on palm-held computers. Technology has also enabled the company to enhance its incident report arrange- ments. “When a breakdown comes in off a client, the call is logged on to a screen, that is then managed from start to fin- ish, we have visibility of that right round the business, we can see how long that vehicle’s down, what they’re doing about it, we constantly update the client,” explains Jeremiah. “When we go and sit with our customer on a monthly basis we can pull off a report for them, show them the whole of their fleet, what was utilised, what was down, what we’ve done about it – it’s just a very good account management system.”
Jeremiah says he is proud to achieve 50 years of successful trading. As to what he perceives as the main difference between the business 50 years ago compared with now, he replies: “We were perceived as a south-west based business for many years, it’s grown to become a truly national business, we have a lot of national clients. But still the same principles as 50 years ago: a promise is a promise – it’s all about service.”
”
Mike Gerber is a freelance journalist
October 2010 Local Authority Waste & Recycling
29
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