Freightmaster – Maintaining Gold

Based in North Lincolnshire, Freightmaster is a small General Haulier specialising in delivering large/obscure concrete panels and beams for major city constructions. We gained our Gold accreditation in 2017 and work towards maintaining the standard throughout 2018.

We initially joined FORS in 2013 as a contractual requirement but over the years since joining we quickly saw the benefit FORS provided to our company distinguishing us from competition, so we have made FORS the baseline for our quality system and started working through the standards. Since achieving gold in 2017 FORS has enabled the whole company to get involved in the progression and maintaining of gold and work to high standards within the company.

We made meaningful improvements to our fleet, updating all to euro VI. FORS showed us how to improve the safety of our vehicles. The safety features now fitted to our vehicles have reduced incidents and collisions.

FORS has many benefits for accredited companies but we find the training the best benefit to us. Before FORS we did the minimum training just to comply with the CPC hours but now the training available is for both drivers and managers and has helped to develop our staff, improve our strategies to reduce collisions and fuel emissions and improve overall knowledge and safety. Our Transport Manager has attended the Fleet manager essentials course as advertised by FORS the course was a good refresher to keep up to date with changes regarding the o licence and in addition networked with other members and discussed experiences. Our transport manager is dedicated to the FORS e-learning modules and finds the classroom courses to be an invaluable tool to help teach the drivers and prepare them for large city deliveries and keep compliant. It has also made the drivers part of our progression which has kept them interested and made them feel part of what we are trying to achieve and maintain gold as a company.

‘FORS enabled us to wisely invest into our vehicles and make meaningful improvements in training. Now we run a modern, efficient fleet that strives to reducing our emissions on the environment with drivers that have a positive attitude to safety.’

Freightmaster are very proud of what we have achieved since joining FORS and strive to continue good working relationships with partners and contractors that share the same goal to making roads safer whilst reducing our impact on the environment.

‘FORS has helped us prove our commitment towards our carbon footprint and the safety of others and it has helped set out the standards we wish to uphold.’ Jo Oakley Transport Manager.

We work hard to proactively monitor and reduce fuel emissions by looking into new modal methods and to keep up to date with the latest vehicle technologies. Our main target has been to improve fuel efficiency. FORS have given us the tools and the knowledge to address our emissions to not only monitor but to put in place ways to reduce them; we are pleased to announce that we has reduced our emissions for a second year. From the results of PCN increase this year it is an area to focus more on and implement ways such as recharging the cost to drivers in an effort to discourage them from carrying out the prohibition.

We have a comprehensive driver fitness and health Annual Questionnaire along with a fitness to drive policy, which is in addition to the eye sight checks and drink and drugs checks we carry out. This is to identify any areas that may affect ability to driver caused by and underlying health problem. After drivers identification of a condition we are able to put strategies in place in order to support our drivers, to improve safety for all.

We have a dedication to attract new young drivers into the industry, we use modern ways of online advertising to reach a wider audience. We offer support to bring out the best in new drivers, in a supportive, industry leading environment giving them the tools to succeed in this most demanding of jobs. We also offer this support internally if current employees wished to change their career to a driver, although we have had no one request this, they are aware of the possibility of up skilling.

We have modern euro VI fleet and operate at times where disruption is minimal by our vehicles and drivers. We monitor eco driving techniques such as anti-idling and look to reduce over revving. We teach courtesy such as muting of radios in an effort to reduce noise pollution. We have retrofitted noise reducing matting onto all our panel carrying trailers and have replaced our reversing alarms with white noise alarms with the aim to reduce noise pollution from our operational activity as much as practically possible.

We have recently explored the opportunity to move part or all of our consignments from road transport to an alternative mode; we have also explored the opportunity to use electric or alternatively fuelled vehicles. However the nature of our loads makes the transition unachievable at this time but we will continue to re assess the cost and practicality as future technologies advance.

We have a commitment to continuous improvement at Freightmaster. We have seen a decrease in our emissions over the last 2 years, together with an improvement in driver attitudes towards education. Our aim going forward is to continue to further invest in the FORS available courses we are going to host the Security and Counter Terrorism classroom course to our drivers as our transport manager took the online courses and found them to be eye openers and we are going to invest in another FORS practitioner and keep enhancing our technologies to help the fleet keep moving forward.

Our maintaining Gold Accreditation shows the dedication we have as a company to improving road safety and the safety of all vulnerable road users not just in London but on a national scale. Achieving gold proved our companies continued hard work but also gave us that next level, to raise the bar of standards and distinguished our company from competition. We are proud of what we have achieved so far.

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