National Windscreens has updated its fleet with new, cleaner vehicles under a £10m investment over four years.
It will initially deploy 158 brand-new vans, mainly Ford Transit Custom and Vauxhall Movano vehicles, over the next few months. These will replace the company’s older vehicles with cleaner engines, factory-fitted safety features, and specialist windscreen repair and replacement equipment.
These will cut the downtime involved with ongoing maintenance of older vehicles including MOT tests and replacing parts, maximising uptime with fewer breakdowns.
The firms said the investment in new vehicles for technicians and staff would help it maintain a much more reliable service. This will then cut downtime for customers too.
“Time on the road is a critical measure for us in our mission to serve the fleet industry. Our job is to keep these key vehicles on the road, and bring them back into service safely and quickly,” said Mark Payne, regional managing director.
The new vans feature a range of standard safety features including monitoring equipment to ensure the vehicles are running as efficiently as possible, dash cameras, as well as a suite of repair and replacement tools, such as canopies, enabling work to be carried out in bad weather. The vans also use onboard racking to securely carry new glass and inverters to provide a 240V supply to power technicians’ tools.
National Windscreens is already making plans to move to an all-electric car fleet for staff not involved in fitting windscreens.
Regional director and general manager Nicky Coetsee said: “The latest cohort of vehicles feature Euro 6-certified engines which are cleaner to run than ever before, but we are constantly evaluating the market and the infrastructure available to pinpoint the right time to make the switch to electric powertrains for our fitting vehicles.
“We have already made this change to electric power with our non-fitting staff vehicles, with 47 of these now either hybrid or fully electric.”
