Independent truck and van repairer Sapphire Vehicle Services has joined forces with renowned axle manufacturer BPW to offer a streamlined, ‘one-stop shop’ service.
Sapphire is one of Britain’s most successful independent commercial vehicle repairers. BPW Ltd is the UK division of Europe’s leading trailer axle and suspension manufacturer. By working together, the two companies aim to reduce costly downtime and ease maintenance headaches for their customers.
Michael Stayman of BPW, left, with Sapphire’s Dave Williams
As an accredited BPW Maintenance Provider and Service Station, Sapphire is committed to meeting strict standards. Its workshops must be equipped with special BPW diagnostic and maintenance tools, and hold comprehensive stocks of spare parts, while technicians undergo product-specific training. Regular audits are carried out to ensure customer service levels are kept uniformly high.
“The arrangement makes perfect sense,” said Sapphire’s Group Operations Manager, Dave Williams. “Our national network of dedicated vehicle maintenance units, and the new all-makes workshops that we’re now opening to all operators, already deal with trailers running on BPW equipment on a daily basis – approximately half of all the work we do is on trailers, and nearly all of those are fitted with BPW components.
“By entering a formal partnership we can now work together even more closely to offer a seamless service to those customers, to help get their vehicles through our workshops and back onto the road, where they earn their keep, as quickly as possible. For example, before gaining this accreditation any warranty issues would have to be sent out to an approved service agent – now, in most cases, we can deal with those in-house.”
The arrangement covers all 19 of Sapphire’s sites across the UK – every one of which is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week – as well as the mobile service vans which are based at each location. These now have the BPW logo added to their liveries, to reflect the partnership between the two brands.
“By joining the BPW Network, Sapphire’s mobile service vans and workshop technicians will be part of the visible face of BPW Customer Services for many operators who use our axles and components,” said Michael Stayman, BPW National Maintenance Network and Fleet Sales. “We already know that Sapphire provides extremely high service levels – they were comfortably ahead of the minimum standard required before we started this process. With the parts stocks and extra product expertise that we have added to the mix, customers can be assured they’ll be very well looked after.”
