Merridale fuelling point for expanding Midlands haulage business

The Midlands-based haulage duo, BJ Waters and George Siddall Transport Limited has opened a third depot in the town of Ripley, Derbyshire. Having outgrown its base at Darley Dale, the new location provides larger offices, additional parking and engineering facilities, within easier reach of the M1 and the national motorway network.

BJ Waters was founded during the 1920s to provide transport services for the coal mining and power generation sectors. A family business now under its fourth-generation owners, it is still equipped to provide bulk material handling, but the work now covers a much broader customer base.

“As the customer base has changed over the years, so have the requirements for our depot facilities,” explains fleet services administrator, Vicki Scales. “Whilst Darley Dale will continue to be the headquarters, Ripley provides more space to accommodate our expanding fleet requirements.”

“Merridale equipment and fuel management software has been part of our operational procedures for many years, so apart from a couple of reference enquiries, we had no concerns about continuing to use Merridale systems for the new installation ”

“We are also mindful of the impact of our operations on the local community. Vehicles have become larger and inevitably the numbers of movements will increase. Setting up a depot in Ripley has afforded the opportunity not only to relocate part of the fleet, but also be more cost efficient as it is closer to the national motorway network.”

The new depot includes a fuelling point installation which has been supplied by Merridale on a fully managed project basis. The installation comprises a dual compartment Diesel/AdBlue storage tank, dispensing pumps and real time tank contents measurement instrumentation for both products. Access to fuel is controlled by proximity key fobs and data entry of vehicle odometer reading (mileage) to authenticate the transaction.

“Merridale equipment and fuel management software has been part of our operational procedures for many years, so apart from a couple of reference enquiries, we had no concerns about continuing to use Merridale systems for the new installation,” says Vicki Scales.

The company had already made the switch over to the Merridale hosted fuel management service, FuelWorks, at Darley Dale, so the additional fuelling point at Ripley was a seamless update, enabling accounts and admin staff to monitor stock levels and access data from both sites. The system has been set up to allow vehicles from both Waters and Siddall transport to draw fuel from both sites.

The new tank provides 60K litres of storage capacity, additional to the 56K tank at Darley Dale. This additional storage capacity allows greater flexibility when purchasing fuel, enabling the company to take advantage of any day to day price fluctuations.

As a measure of fleet consumption, 90 keys have been issued to both the Waters and the Siddall fleet vehicles. Stock is replenished at both depots by full tanker loads of 36K litres, generally every 10 days. This amounts to an annual throughput at the depot of some 1.7 million litres per annum.

Added to this, Waters operations involve long distance and European continental journeys. Drivers are therefore also provided with fuel account cards for fuelling away from the base facilities.

“Clearly fuel management is a priority, says Vicki Scales. We look for every opportunity to save on these costs. Additionally, of course, fuel usage relates to our carbon footprint and the impact of our operations on the environment.

“As a FORS operator we have a responsibility to monitor fleet emissions. So, it is important that we can show that we have procedures in place to be able to report on fuel usage accurately. The Merridale FuelWorks service fulfils this requirement.”