Company overview

Industry

Transport and Warehousing

Sector

Fleet & workshop

Fleet Size

717 vehicles and 860 trailers

Head of Fleet and Compliance

Andy Williams

See how Owens Group moved from paper defect reporting and quickly rolled out a digital defect reporting and fleet management system using Vehocheck.

Established in 1972 by Huw Owen with one van in Llanelli, South Wales and shortly after joined by his brother Eurof Owen, Owens Group today employs circa 1,000 people across the UK with an annual turnover in excess of £100M. Owens group offer their customers a dedicated and professional 24/7 service, 364 days a year, with depots based in Llanelli, Port Talbot, Bridgend, Newport, Droitwich, Wrexham and Carrington.

The Group operate a fleet of 717 vehicles along with 860 trailers, consisting of a range of leading marques including DAF, MAN, Volvo & Scania of which 80% are under two years old.

Owens Group warehousing offers 2.5 million square feet of space supporting its Logistics, Pallet Distribution, Bulk Haulage, and Express & Home Delivery fleets.

This year saw the opening of its new HQ based at Bynea, SA14 – a flagship depot in preparation for celebrations across 2022 marking 50years in business.

Company Founder and Group Chairman Huw Owen was awarded an MBE, Member of the Order of the British Empire, in the 2020 Queen’s birthday honours for services to Employment and the community in Llanelli and South Wales.

Owens Group continues to grow and maintain its core values based on being driven by its customers and people.

Now with three generations of the family working from within and a strong and capable senior management team all eyes are firmly on the future, with Ian Owen becoming Managing Director in 2021, and Huw moving to Group Chairman.

Using paper defect books and spreadsheets for vehicle compliance.

Before using Vehocheck, all our vehicle defect reporting, as well as maintenance and service planning, was carried out on paper, spreadsheets and wall planners.

We did have some existing systems in place to manage costs, but they lacked basic functionality and relied heavily on manual input and all the exported data lacked basic detail.

Our current processes were not scalable

We knew that our current processes were not scalable, and many staff hours were being used in the collation and inputting of manual paper records, so we started to look for vehicle compliance and fleet management provider to help us with the following:

Complete vehicle transparency and analysis
Direct monitoring of both internal and external service providers
Easy accessibility
Ease of use for both drivers, fleet, and compliance management
Ability to track True Cost of Ownership (TCO)

After extensive research, demonstrations, and meetings with various companies, we chose Vehocheck as our vehicle compliance and fleet management provider.

Better and Informed Decisions

Operating from numerous regional depots as well as having a large pool of vehicles and drivers, we wanted to ensure quick adoption of the Vehocheck system, but we were unsure how to achieve this.

The Vehocheck team were on hand to help! They set up our depot structures and reporting features, imported vehicles and trailers as well as drivers and fleet management teams so we were up and running quickly.

Andy Williams, Head of Fleet and Compliance and Owens Group Transport “Having all this data on hand enables us to make more informed and better decisions within the fleet department “

Vehocheck has dramatically improved vehicle defect reporting and given us full driver and vehicle visibility as well as improving efficiencies and reducing cost. We have seen a massive reduction in paper costs as we no longer have to produce paper vehicle inspection sheets or paper vehicle defect books and additional staff resources have been re-deployed within the transport and fleet department.

Andy Williams, Head of Fleet and Compliance and Owens Group Transport – “In the year we have been using Vehocheck, it has already proven itself to be invaluable, it does everything we were originally looking for in a fleet management system and much more”

Owens Group head office now have full visibility at both group and depot levels. This gives a more detailed and granular breakdown that includes drivers and vehicles as well as defect and defect rectification costs which can be viewed and analysed within the Vehocheck dashboard or exported by depot, driver, vehicle and even manufacturer.

“In the year we have been using Vehocheck, it has already proven itself to be invaluable, it does everything we were originally looking for in a fleet management system and much more”

Andy Williams, Head of Fleet and Compliance at Owens Group Transport

Real-time fleet management and transparency

We now have minute by minute visibility of all our vehicles, drivers and workshops which aids in the planning of scheduled and ad-hoc vehicle maintenance.

The ability to grant access to sub-contractors and external service providers helps us better manage the work they are allocated and perform. The data can be used to monitor their costs easily and more accurately.

In our workshop alone, by moving from paper reporting to digital we have noticed that productivity has dramatically increased.

With Vehocheck, planning, sharing, and managing upcoming vehicle maintenance and repairs is easy. We now have a complete calendared maintenance schedule for our fleet with automatic reminders and notifications set so we never miss an important maintenance event.

All repairs, maintenance records and costings are stored against each vehicle creating a full-service history per vehicle. This demonstrates that the asset has been maintained and complies with DVSA standards as well as the manufactures service guidance.

“Having all this data on hand enables us to make more informed and better decisions within the fleet department”

Andy Williams, Head of Fleet and Compliance at Owens Group Transport

Vehocheck support

The team at Vehocheck have made our transition from paper to digital fleet management easy. With their help, we were able to quickly roll out the digital defect reporting and fleet management system to all our depots, vehicles, and drivers.

The continuous support from Vehocheck has been very important to us at Owens Group, they are always on hand and listen to our suggestions, some of which are company-specific and include tailoring Vehocheck to our needs whilst others benefit the many fleets and companies using Vehocheck.