Hi Shaun,
Glad you are considering us, most customers we have that need accommodation just book the premier inn at nether Poppleton, I go past it everyday on the way to work and its only a mile from our place.
I know we get slated on here for just being a driving school with posh looking trucks, but there is a lot more to us than that. The industry lacks good training standards, poor vehicles and instructors with bad advice is the norm. As folk can read in a recent post about how many tests did it take you to pass. It shows how training vehicles break down and instructor seem unable to explain weight limits correctly or how to approach and observe at roundabouts.
We have built a strong reputation in Yorkshire, every haulage firm in the area knows how we operate, they expect to pay a little more to come to us but know that they are using a company they can trust to do a good job.
Internet forums can be disgruntled places at times, its a place people let off steam I guess after a hard days driving. We have been around since 1971, we are a small training school not catering to the masses that want to do it as cheap as possible, sucked in by false information they can pass first time for say £800, some do I’m sure but many have a number of retests. We are quite blunt at our place but in a nice way, it will cost you £xxxx but we aim to ensure you pass on the first attempt and we can’t do anything to change that, you either want to do it right or the customers takes his chances and goes elsewhere. It may seem like poor way to operate because we do lose work but on the upside those that do come to us have helped us build a strong following involving lots of repeat business as they recommend us to friends and family and its not unusual for a local business to send 20 drivers per year to us.
I’ll never convince everyone or maybe even anyone, its like a chef saying eat at my pub because I’m a great cook. However if a friend told you the pub was great you would believe them and that’s how we operate.
And also, our new Volvo FH is great, but to those that think its extravagant, think of it like this, I’ll keep it 10 years, so that means it will cost me £10,000 per year, now factoring in it earns upto £4000 a week that’s frankly peanuts, however the cost of fuel is another story, that costs me £20,000 a year! And an old uneconomical fm12 will do about 8mpg compared to our new doing nearly 10mpg. Plus with new trucks you don’t have much maintenance which saves us a fortune, we have successfully worked out that running new trucks actually saves us money and a lot of hassle from potential customer complaints if the truck was hard to drive or broke down, as our business is very customer focused we absolutely hate getting complaints and do whatever it takes to ensure every customer wether they pass or fail is satisfied with what we provided, thats why we buy new trucks.
I mean a 3 hr drive to Yorkshire isn’t anywhere near the end of the world.