Messina Transport Ltd – Maintaining Gold

Messina Transport Ltd is a family run company that has been around for the last 17 years. The company started with just one lorry and over the past 17 years, we’ve grown it into 10 lorries. We are based in Nazeing in Essex we delivery high end natural, recycled and renewable products for our major clients. Messina Transport Ltd is a haulier that takes great pride in working with industry leaders to deliver their products to their clients the safest possible way. Giuseppe Messina is our Owner and Transport Manager, and we have elected him to be our Fuel and Emissions Champion and he explains how important FORS is to our Company.

FORS dovetails our business principles and ethics. When we looked at the requirements and benefits of joining the scheme, we saw that they fit perfectly with our ethos of improving safety whilst complementing our drive to improve fuel efficiency and reduce our environmental impact.

We hope to achieve our Gold accreditation and we will ensure we maintain this standard and grow with FORS as the standard continues to develop.

The performance management toolkit has helped us improve our MPG across the whole fleet year on year. We have also found that the FORS E-Learning training modules have also played a very important part in keeping our drivers aware of all their responsibilities and always looking out for vulnerable road users. FORS has helped us stay compliant with all legal obligations and best practise.

‘FORS has helped us stay compliant and improve on best practices.’ – Giuseppe Messina Managing Director

All our drivers have completed their Safe Urban Driving course and the FORS Cycle Safety E-Learning modules. We have put a schedule in place to carry out continues FORS E-Learning modules and FORS practitioner courses. We have also invested heavily in vehicle safety systems cameras, nearside proximity sensors and audible alarms for all our vehicles.’

‘We have increased our MPG by 11.11% since our baseline year.’ – Giuseppe Messina Managing Director

We have managed to keep our accidents/incidents down to zero for the last 4 years in a row. 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.

*No incidents for the past 4 years.

• We get all my drivers to complete a comprehensive Medical Declaration on an 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 adopted a recruitment policy to try and help us recruit young drivers into the Transport industry where possible. All my drivers have been with me for a few years now and we have recently taken on 2 new drivers who come to us by word of mouth.
• We only have 1 Operating centre and we use it for parking our lorries. We don’t do any loading/ unloading on site and all our servicing is done by main dealers at their sites not ours. The only noise generated is when my lorries are idling so we can carry out our defect checks. All my lorries have white noise reversing alarms fitted to them.
• We carry building blocks to construction sites across the whole country on behalf of one of our clients. As we rely on our client asking us to deliver to various construction sites across the whole country, we never know where we are going until they need us to deliver. Therefore we can’t afford to try and move anything via barge or train as we collect all the building blocks from Nazeing and then go deliver to building sites on behalf of our client. There is no other method than using a lorry that is practical and cost effective. We are replacing all our lorries with Euro 6 engines as and when they are due for replacement. We have looked at electric vehicles and because of the weights we carry and the fact that our lorries have specialist equipment fitted, no manufactures have produced an alternative fuelled vehicle that can carry the weight we do and go over the same terrain we do and cover the same distance we travel.

By continue and developing what FORS has taught us, we will be able to improve our MPG and reduce any wasted idling we might have and keep our accidents & Collisions to zero.

Gaining FORS Gold Accreditation will reflect 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. While this is a significant achievement, we will continue to work with FORS – moving forward to further improve the standard in order to give the haulage industry a safe and environmentally stronger image. In addition to this, we have also managed to make a significant saving by reducing our fuel usage and improving our MPG.