Aztek Logistics Ltd – Going for Gold

Aztek Logistics has been established since April 2003 and from small beginnings has grown into a major player in the warehousing and distribution industry. Having built the business on quality and the ability to deal with single pallet deliveries through to full load distribution throughout the UK and Europe. In 2009, we acquired our 7 acre site in Letchworth Garden City, complete with 70,000 sq ft of secure, bulk and racked warehousing. Within this impressive facility we were able to offer a number of value added services, such as pick and pack, to complement our client’s many needs. Becoming a member of Pallet Track network in 2010, enabled us to continue our constant push for improvement in technology, which has helped us to provide cutting edge services such as online proof of delivery with track and trace, online job entry, and signature capture. Duncan Pannell, our Operations Manager is our elected Fuel and Emissions Campion and he explains how important FORS is to our Company.

We came across FORS when tendering for work across London. When we looked at the requirements and benefits of joining the scheme we saw that they fitted in perfectly with our ethos of improving safety whilst complementing our drive to improve fuel efficiency and reduce our environmental impact’

We take compliance and safety very seriously so we achieved our Bronze and Silver Accreditation first time. FORS did help us by providing training and tools that improved the policies and procedures’

The performance management toolkit really helped us set our targets for reducing our carbon footprint and improving our MPG. FORS has helped us improve our filing systems and procedures’

‘FORS has helped us achieve compliance and safety’ – Duncan Pannell Operations Manager

All our drivers have completed their Safe Urban Driving course which was funded by the Transport for London. We have also invested heavily in vehicle safety systems cameras, nearside proximity sensors and audible alarms for all our vehicles. All our drivers have also completed FORS E-Learning modules.’

‘We have improved our MPG by 9.64% since our baseline year’ – Duncan Pannell Operations Manager

• We have managed to improve our MPG across the whole fleet by 9.64% compared to our baseline year. We achieved this by making sure we always selected the best route possible to all our sites and we plan ahead before leaving the yard

• We get all my drivers to complete a Medical Declaration on a annually basis even though the FORS Standard states once every 5 years. It’s also mentioned in the drivers handbook that if they at any point in time start suffering from a medical condition they need to notify the company ASAP as well as if they need to start taking medication prescribed by their GP or over the counter drugs. We will then investigate it to see if it’s still safe for the driver to be driving for the company and we may even ask the driver to get a letter from his doctor informing the company if he is still able to drive for the company. We will then start doing more driver assessments on the driver to make sure he isn’t a risk to the company or anyone on the road.
• We have recently adopted a recruitment policy to try and help us recruit young drivers into the Transport industry as we are very short on drivers.
• We only have 1 Operators yard and it’s in an Industrial Estate. We do carry out work at our site, we use this site for parking our Vehicles and storing clients Pallets. Servicing is done by main dealers at their premises and as we are a haulage company we go to a site either after being loaded at our Operators yard or we load at the clients site and then go drop it off at its destination. We use Gas Forklifts to load all our lorries and we are trying and reduce any noise. All my lorries have white noise reversing alarms fitted to them.
• We carry palletts and boxes to and from customers sites across the whole country. As we rely on our customers asking us to collect the products and goods from various sites across the whole country, we never know where we are going until they need us. Therefore we can’t afford to try and move anything via barge or train as we collect all the equipment from customer sites and there is no other method than using a lorry and we then asked to deliver anywhere in the country. So using a Lorry is the most cost effective way of moving our clients goods. We are replacing all our lorries with Euro 6 engines as and when they are due. 80% of our current fleet is Euro 6 and the remaining 20% is euro 5 and be planned to be replaced within the next 2 years. We have looked at electric vehicles and because of the weights we carry and the fact that our lorries have specialist equipment fitted no manufacture have produced an alternative fuelled vehicle that can carry the weight we do and go over the same terrain we do.

We will continue using what FORS has taught us to improve our MPG and reduce any wasted idling we might have.

Gaining FORS Gold Accreditation shows how dedicated we are as a company to improving road safety and the safety of all vulnerable road users in London as well as nationally. We will continuously use what FORS has taught us to help reduce our carbon footprint and make the roads so safer for everyone that uses them. We have also managed to make a significant saving by reducing our fuel usage and improving our MPG.

Please note: All published FORS Gold case studies have been submitted by the accredited company named above and transcribed verbatim.