Tuesday 29 March 2016

The CV Show - THE show for those in transport

Less than a month away from the transport industry event of the year, the Commercial Vehicle Show at the NEC.

Axtec are celebrating their 25th anniversary this year and we’re proud to have attended every single CV Show in all its formats since day one.

It’s a great event and the perfect showcase for anyone with products to sell into the commercial vehicle field.

Regardless of the type of fleet you run, there will be new innovations and ideas throughout the show and it really is a ‘must visit’ event. Even meeting up with existing suppliers can bring new ideas to help improve efficiency.

Money can be saved by buying on line of course and we all do that extensively these days. But some products don’t lend themselves to that sort of purchasing arrangement. In depth discussions might be need, site surveys completed and plans drawn up. All of which require meeting sellers face to face and what better place to do it than at the CV Show?
All things axle weighing from Axtec at the CV Show

Getting out for a day and, after the show, attending meetings and surveys is all time consuming and costly and the temptation to buy something on line is great. But trying to short circuit the buying of highly technical products can very often prove to be a false economy in the long run.

Axle weighing is a greatly misunderstood field, we’re still earning even after a quarter of a century in business, and we often chat to buyers who maybe didn’t talk to someone face to face, bought something off the internet and later regretted it.

Even if you have no new products to launch, the Show is a great way of showcasing your existing products buyers who are currently using a competitor. What better way to demonstrate how superior your offer is than face to face in a business environment?

Meeting up with existing clients can also be fruitful. Everyone is so busy that it can be hard to catch up with old contacts but the CV Show is a great place to bump into them. And it often results in new business as they may bring a colleague or someone from another depot. And so a new conversation starts.

So if you’re in the market for transport related products or just searching for new ideas, the CV Show at the NEC 26th, 27th, 28th April is the place to be.

And if it’s axle weighing you want to chat about, we'll be on stand 5A79. So feel free to come along and say hello.

Friday 11 March 2016

What if your vehicles are getting heavier not lighter?

Trying to do things more efficiently makes perfect business sense.


Keeping costs down is something that every company has to do so it’s inevitable that some will try and do with a 3.5 tonne vehicle what they used to do with a larger weight capacity one. And high volume vans are a very common sight on our roads now.

They make an awful lot of sense for many people – no tachographs, no transport manager, no specialist training to drive one – to name a few. So it’s hardly surprising that for people who really don’t need a 7.5 tonner that they will try and do the work with something much cheaper to run.

But despite not being subject to many of the rules that larger vehicles are, they are still subject to overloading legislation. And if you do run larger vehicles, even though the vans don’t need to be on the operators licence, any transgressions will need to be reported to the authorities and could affect an ‘O’ licence renewal.

One of our customers had an interesting problem. The nature of their product had changed over the years and become much lighter and easier to handle. With a much lighter product to deliver, the decision was made to move away from 7.5 tonners to Luton bodied 3.5 tonners. The cost savings were considerable.
Axtec OnBoard Protecting Vans from Overloading

But there was one snag.

As part of their operation, they offered a recycling service. Taking away an old, and much heavier item, than the new one they were delivering. Potentially the vehicle could actually be heavier at the end of its round than it was at the beginning.

Fortunately not every customer had an old unit to recycle but the vehicle weights did need monitoring closely.

Regular readers will know that overloading adversely effects all the major components on the vehicle – brakes, clutch, steering – and could even invalidate insurance n the event of an accident.

So the solution was to fit Axtec OnBoard Axle LoadIndicators to the new fleet.

Showing the drivers the axle and gross weights together with an automatic overload warning at all time during the round solved the problem. No manual controls meant drivers had nothing to fiddle with or break and the customer calibration facility meant no expensive service engineers visits either.


Offering that all important recycling service became a major selling point for them. And with our help, no more risks of overloading either.