St. Helens Council recommends Kerb-Sort thanks to first class reliability

St Helens Council purchased 12 Romaquip Kerb-Sort vehicles in 2013, these all became operational on 23rd September on the new kerbside recycling service that commenced on that day.

Pre tender Romaquip were extremely helpful and supportive, to ensure we competed a thorough consultation programme with residents, councillors, collection teams and the maintenance team we had their demonstration vehicle on several separate occasions.

During the procurement exercise, they modified the standard Kerb-Sort vehicle to ensure that we got exactly what we wanted within our budgeted costs and operational constraints.

When the order was placed it contained an ambitious build programme and despite a major production issue at the factory all the vehicles were received and commissioned prior to the 23rd September.

The vehicles have now been fully operational for three months and due to the success of the scheme we are currently double shifting the vehicles 6am-9pm five days per week, supported if necessary by Saturday’s and Sunday’s.

We are collecting paper, glass, food, plastic, cans and cardboard in a single pass. Based on market research we expected to collect around 180t per week on this new scheme, to date we are averaging around 280t per week.

Like all new schemes no matter how good the planning is they rarely go to plan and we had to adapt to operational issues. To support us through the first month or so of the contract, Romaquip had at least one engineer based on site in St Helens and provided their demonstration vehicle for support.

Although it is early days, the Kerb-Sort vehicle's reliability has been first class, other than the three Bank Holidays over the Christmas & New Year period all the vehicles have been double shifted including Saturday’s & Sunday’s and we did not have any reliability issues.

Due to the massive buy in by residents we have now placed on order for a further 4 Kerb-Sort vehicles. Based on my experiences to date I would have no hesitation in recommending the Kerb-Sort or Romaquip.

Steve Marsh, Transport Manager, St. Helens Council.