TrustFord unveils grand new site
TrustFord has lifted the shutters to a new site that has the capacity to handle 33,000 vehicles a year – and the potential for much more than that in the coming years.
The largest Ford dealer in the UK has only moved along a single unit within the Long Marston Business Park, but while the geographical shift is minimal, the shift in business operations is anything but.
The numbers alone tell a story: seven acres has become 22.4 acres, an internal floor space of 11,000sqft has mushroomed to 77,000sqft, while a workforce of 12 will swell to 58 in the coming weeks.
On top of that, the introduction of an on-site bodyshop will streamline the process and ensure that, despite the vast quantities, vehicles will be in and out within a five-day period.
The distribution centre will provide support for nine fleet centres around the group and 14 transit centres – carrying out pre-delivery inspections (PDI), taking and uploading vehicle images to streamline the sales process, and purchasing and refurbing up to 3,000 commercial vehicles for resale through the network.
TrustFord fleet director Mark Wilkie said, ‘We’ve now got three and a bit times the external space and seven times the internal space. That gives us the capacity to store somewhere between 6,000 and 7,000 vehicles on site.
‘It’s a vast operation. We estimate that 33,000 vehicles will go through here each year – that’s 125 every working day. But that’s not capacity. It wouldn’t be that difficult to bolt a second shift on in the future – the site has the capacity to deal with it.’
The site is creating up to 50 new jobs for the local community, with every new member of staff attending TrustFord’s Induction Academy before taking up their role. Among those will be a dedicated member of staff to take and upload video and static images, as well a person responsible for the key room – where every set of keys will be kept. Nothing, it seems, has been left to chance.
