D&G Noble Maintaining the Gold Standard

D & G Noble Ltd are a road transport company based in Bedford currently operating a fleet of 30 vehicles. We specialise in self on/off loading vehicles including dry powder tankers, Hiabs and Moffett equipped trucks. Being based in Bedford we are ideally located to cover most of the country and have easy access to London.

We have been operating with FORS accreditation for 6 years now, having held the Gold Accreditation for 4 years. Over this time, we have seen benefits in reduced CO2 emissions, lowered NOx/Particulate Matter emissions, an improved road safety record as well as a decrease in transport related fines and charges.

Following a request from one of our customers in early 2012 we looked at what we could do to become involved in the Fleet Operator Recognition Scheme. After research, we believed that our company would benefit from FORS membership helping us to increase efficiency and improve our Company Handbook & Policy writing.

“Since our introduction to FORS in 2012 we have seen massive improvements in MPG & a reduction in Collisions & related Incidents. We attribute the majority of this to the driver training offered by FORS.” – Luke Busbridge Business Development Manager

At our Bonze Audit we were informed that we already operated at a good standard and would achieve Silver and Gold accreditation with some additional work. At that time, within the industry, there didn’t appear to be any other self-offloading haulier with these accreditations so the chance to show that we could operate at this level of good practice was a brilliant incentive. Once we had achieved Gold status it also created a huge benefit for our customers as they are now able to offer deliveries with a FORS Gold accredited company.

FORS standards have encouraged us to continually evolve the specification of new replacement vehicles and in doing so we now have a growing fleet of trucks that utilise a range of safety features designed to improve the safety of both the driver and the vulnerable road user. They also use the latest tracking, vehicle and driver management software. Monitoring this information has allowed us to significantly improve our CO2 per Km output.

“The FORS workshops have been a great tool for gaining knowledge and learning what policies & improvements fellow FORS members have found useful. Having access to the FORS Driver Training Programme has enabled us to put all of our drivers through the Safe Urban Driving (SUDS) & LoCity driving courses. Already heavily focused on driver & vehicle safety we used FORS associate companies to further improve our cycle safety systems.” – Steve Noble Director

• Driver health and fitness review – All drivers have a regular & comprehensive health checklist and we work closely with our drivers so would notice if there were any significant changes in the driver’s health & wellbeing. We issued drivers with exercises that can be carried out during the day & we are also in negotiations with the local gym to offer discounted rates to all the D&G Noble employees.
• Strategy for recruiting drivers – We keep up to date with industry led initiatives for recruiting new drivers as well as helping drivers through their class 2 & class 1 licence. We have also trained one of our drivers to become an in-vehicle assessor to carry out both the initial new driver assessment alongside offering support and advice to existing drivers.
• Noise assessment – Vehicles are fitted with White noise reversing alarms, anti-idling equipment & automatic engine speed control (for when operating vehicle loader) to help reduce the noise produced by our operation.
• Modal shift and alternative vehicles – Due to the nature of our work the delivery point tends to be very vehicle specific with the type of load/offload required so we are unable to use other options for delivery. Our latest vehicle purchases have included front air suspension helping reduce the ride height in urban areas giving the driver more direct vision with vulnerable road users as well as passenger door lower windows for direct vision.

At D&G Noble we will carry on specifying the latest in vehicle safety. Replacing older engines for new Euro VI and keeping up to date with all the industry initiatives helping reduce fuel wastage, incidents & increase staff confidence. We will continue to maximise the driver training offered by Fleet Source & FORS.

We regularly post to our social media with sites that we have attended that are FORS and used #forsgold.

Maintaining the Gold accreditation will show our commitment to keeping up to date with the latest in safety and efficiency and will continue to give our customers the confidence that they are dealing with a Gold standard haulier.

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