Conti360° and Modern Tyres Service Support for Eagle Overseas
Eagle Overseas, the Banbridge-based, Northern Ireland transport group, has reported significant cost and performance improvements through its enhanced tyre management strategy.
This comes just over a year after the group switched to the Conti360° Fleet Services programme.
The family-run business offers a full package of parcel services, contract and warehouse logistics across the UK, Ireland and Europe, including airfreight services, operating a modern fleet of some 90 vehicles. The company delivers same day and overnight delivery of a wide range of loads, from fast moving consumer goods and retail products, to pharmaceuticals, textiles, manufacturing equipment, IT systems and event supplies.
Commenting on the gains made through adoption of Conti360° Fleet Services, business development director, Carol Norval, said, “In previous years we had been running mixed brands of tyre, however this strategy had many issues of reliability, cost and fleet management, so we had been actively looking for a sustainable solution.”
That solution came about as a result of talking to Continental Tyres local management team, and its highly-regarded local dealer, Modern Tyres. “We decided to make a change because we needed a dedicated tyre solution that was fit for our purpose,” said Carol Norval. She continued. “Monitoring and reporting was a key feature that we wanted to incorporate into our tyre strategy across the entire fleet, and it soon became clear to us that Conti360°, with the local service support of Modern Tyres, which has 43 branches throughout Ireland, was the obvious choice.”
Following discussions, agreement was reached and, in May 2017, Continental became the sole tyre and tyre-management service supplier to Eagle Overseas. This saw the fleet change completely from its former mixed-tyre policy to a complete 100% Conti new-only policy – specifically, the latest ‘Generation 3’ Continental Hybrid tyres; HS3 and HD3 for tractor steer and drive axles respectively, with HT3 tyres on the trailer fleet. These have re-designed narrowed groove widths that give an increased pattern volume aimed at improving wear resistance, delivering high mileage performance and resulting increased economy. Continental also claims enhanced wet weather performance.
In this first year of changing to the 100% Conti policy, Eagle Overseas has seen many benefits to the fleet. “There has definitely been a reduction in downtime due to tyre failures, as well as an extended tyre life overall,” says Carol Norval. “The current Generation 3 products offer us a range of sizes, which is ideal, and another key benefit of using the Conti360° Fleet programme is that it allows us to tap into both Continental new and retread products.”
Eagle Overseas benefits additionally from the use of the Continental Casing Management programme element of Conti360°, in which worn tyres are returned to Continental to be inspected and graded, and then either re-used in the production of Continental’s retreaded ‘ContiRe’ range, or scrapped and disposed of responsibly. Also within Conti360° is a complete initial tyre fitment service, a comprehensive breakdown programme in the event of an on-road tyre issue, ContiFleetCheck, with its regular inspections to get the best performance out of a fleet’s tyres, and ContiFleetReporting, which delivers regular, complete analysis of a fleet’s tyre-related data to show potential for any tyre-related cost savings. The two latter elements chiming strongly with Eagle Overseas stated requirement for ‘monitoring and reporting’.
Local and regional support is always an important part of service-delivery in any successful relationship. Modern Tyres Group Sales and Marketing Manager, Stephen Shaw, commented, “We were very pleased to be able to work with the commercial fleet team at Continental to offer an all-round, tailored solution for Eagle Overseas and secure their business. Large modern fleets are looking continuously to simplify their tyre purchasing process and find reliable ways to analyse and record tyre performance data. With the Continental Tyres team and my own people in Modern Tyres, Conti360° is the perfect way for any responsible operator to deal with its tyre strategy in one simple, cost-effective move. It allows us to help customers such as Eagle Overseas find sustainable ways to significantly reduce their costs.”
Eagle Overseas is not resting on its laurels, however, and over the coming couple of years has plans in place to significantly expand operations. Warehousing is an increasingly important element of company activity, currently covering everything from storage and order fulfilment to inventory, reverse logistics and waste management.