Baxi

System Edström has supplied van racking for heating company Baxi since the early 1990s. Over that time, we have built up a strong relationship with the company.

Baxi’s vans carry a wide range of parts and products to keep customers’ houses warm and their water hot. And the company prides itself on its ability to fix its customers’ problems quickly and on the first visit. So it’s important that all these items, along with the engineer’s tools, are easily accessible.

With an army of heating and plumbing engineers and hundreds of vehicles on the road for Baxi every day, efficiency is paramount. The company tracks and analyses a copious amount of data to make sure its engineers are on point and customers are satisfied at all times. Baxi keeps tabs on how long it takes to do the job, what stock is used, fuel consumption and much more.

At the heart of all this is the engineer. Each needs a van that has everything that’s needed on well organised and easy to lay your hands on. Ideally, any engineer should be able to drive any van and know exactly where to find all they’ll need. And the layout needs to minimise any risk of injury so engineers aren’t inconvenienced and working days lost are kept to a minimum.

So System Edström worked up a design that cleverly made use of all the space in the van, while making everything accessible from outside, meaning the engineer does not need to enter the van to pick things out – a common cause of accidents.

The answer was to move to smaller vans and design a layout that fills them with shelving. Access is provided through the rear doors and twin wide doors. This allows engineers to get at everything they need from outside the van. They don’t have to climb in, so there’s less chance of an accident.

By making the vans smaller and changing the layout, they’re not just safer – they’re more fuel-efficient, too. This gives Baxi a further cost saving as they’re cheaper to run and cheaper to insure than big vans carrying a lot of stock. It also means less maintenance, thereby bringing down leasing costs.

W recently went through a programme of converting all Baxi’s vehicles and the company will soon have replaced all their big vans with the smaller vans. The result is a more efficient, cheaper fleet, which fits into the company’s ethos of working smarter.

And working with System Edström has also made for a much easier process for the company’s fleet managers. Once the company decided on a new van model and placed the orders, we were able to take control of the whole process. Vans were delivered directly to our premises in Corby, where all installation work was taken care of, including application of the Baxi livery.