CVW Magazine visits Fergusons Transport Ltd’s new commercial site in Northumberland to get an insight into the project from David C.Wilkinson, Fergusons Transport Ltd’s General Manager of Property, and Tony Gilson, GEMCO’s Regional Sales Manager for the North & Scotland.
Fergusons Transport Ltd covers everything from transport, warehousing, removals, self-storage and property development. Fergusons currently has 150 trucks on the road and 260 trailers, meaning around 30 trucks and 21 trailers are serviced each week and tested once a year. On top of this, the company services and tests vehicles for some of its customers. In order to cope with this workload, Fergusons decided to open a new commercial workshop, which features a range of equipment from garage equipment specialists GEMCO.
In 2016 Fergusons’ initial brief to GEMCO was to create a new vehicle maintenance building, including the requirement to create a Vehicle Test Station for Fergusons and outside customer’s vehicles. Tony Gilson was given the task of making Fergusons’ vision a reality.
David C. Wilkinson, Fergusons’ General Manager of Property, said: “After a number of meetings with GEMCO’s Tony Gilson, it was decided that the most suitable equipment for the new commercial workshop would include: two interconnected pits, two commercial brake testers, an emissions analyser, shaker plates and headlight beam setters.”
Tony went onto design the whole workshop, effectively utilising the space whilst meeting the budget. GEMCO’s drawing office then came up with computer aided drawings to give Fergusons more of an idea how the finished site would look. GEMCO’s mission is to provide the best customer journey possible to all customers from initial supply, design, installation and project management all the way through to after sales service.
“Both lanes are designed to ATF specification but as of now only one lane has been dedicated and approved for DVSA testing,” explained Tony Gilson.
“In the future, the other lane can be approved – and also either lane can be upgraded to tacho testing, as we also included a separate tacho office within the design to accommodate in the future.”
David said: “Tony was on-hand daily throughout the entire process and carried out weekly meetings with Fergusons chosen construction company; ‘Robertsons Construction’ to ensure that everything went smoothly and all deadlines throughout the project were met, whilst eliminating some of the stress away from Fergusons’ team. As we were happy with the installation we also decided to take out a service contract with GEMCO Service.”
Prior to the refurbishment Fergusons were limited to a fairly small workshop and the increased business meant there was a massive need for expansion. Three months in, the company says that the new workshop is keeping up with the demand of services for both in-house vehicles, whilst providing enough space and equipment to service outside customer vehicles also.
“Both lanes are designed to ATF specification but as of now only one lane has been dedicated and approved for DVSA testing,” explained Tony Gilson.
“In the future, the other lane can be approved – and also either lane can be upgraded to tacho testing, as we also included a separate tacho office within the design to accommodate in the future.”
Equipment fitted:
Two Pre-fabricated 13m ATF Compliant Steel Pits
Fergusons’ brief was to supply 2 x Prefabricated Steel Pits. To cater for customer requirements, GEMCO’s pits are manufactured specifically to suit each site. Fergusons had a range of special requirements for its pre-fabricated pits, examples of this include: An additional side tunnel with two sets of steps, plain steel walls, chequer durbar plate floor and full length side wall recess for lighting and compressed air points.
Two Sherpa BPS TWIN 18 Class 4, 5L, 7 & ATF Commercial Brake Testers
The Sherpa BPS TWIN commercial vehicle roller brake tester is a one man operated machine with tablet operation as standard. Fergusons wanted to take advantage of being able to have two members of the team testing a vehicle’s brakes at the same time. A solid state PC – which works in conjunction with the tablet – is used for operation of the machine’s easy-to use DVSA software programme (which is updated free at time of calibration). This step-by-step software guides the user through the test sequence and produces a pass/fail test result, which can be stored or printed on the supplied A4 printer. Tony Gilson added: “Commercial brake testers can easily pay for themselves in no time, especially if you are currently outsourcing services on your vehicles, and like Fergusons, you offer a facility whereby customers can get their own commercial vehicles serviced.”
SHERPACOMBI Combined Emission Analyser
A British built PC based unit suitable for petrol and diesel vehicles. Standard features include a wireless diesel smoke head and engine speed/temperature readings taken via the EOBD socket using the multi RPM module, cables to break or trip over are a thing of the past. Every MOT test is stored to memory for instant retrieval. A Wi-Fi enabled PC with flexibility to run your own programmes is supplied as standard and includes a CD Rom, 19 inch colour monitor, keyboard and mouse.
The jacks these were custom designed to meet Fergusons specific requirements and are fitted with arms suitable for the custom made pits. Tony Gilson added: “These are designed for trucks, buses and DVSA ATF inspection pits, the 20 tonne rated jack offers all the performance and safety features of the bigger 40- tonne range for heavier vehicles, such as military, quarry, mining and railway vehicles.”
Further information on Fergusons Transport Ltd can be found at: www.fergytrux.com
For further information on equipment fitted, to discuss your own ATF Test Lane requirements or any other garage equipment related queries call GEMCO on 01604 828 600 or email sales@gemco.co.uk.
