Page 30 - Commercial Vehicle Engineer - April 2019

NEWS FROM THE NORTH
MARTIN HAY has been with the Scania organisation for more
than 28 years in total. During this time he has worked within the dealer network, at importer level and at Scania’s headquarters operation
in Sweden.
His dealer career included spells as managing director for the former Scantruck operation and as regional executive director for Scania South East. In 2009 he moved to Scania (Great Britain) Ltd’s Milton Keynes headquarters to take up the role of sales director.
In 2016 he transferred to Scania AB to become vice president, truck sales to work on the global development of the Scania brand and as a member of the core team overseeing the introduction of Scania’s new Generation trucks.
He was appointed to the position of managing director for Scania GB on 1 September 2018, succeeding Claes Jacobsson who has returned to Sweden to take up a role within Scania AB in Södertälje.
James Colbourne and Martin Hay in front of the new Dundee depot.
James Colbourne con rmed that
the ‘tartan’ tipper market had eased somewhat due to the completion of the massive road building programme in central Scotland. ‘This market will return of course and truck sales will continue
to ourish, however I have a couple of wishes, rstly that the A9 is completed
to a dual carriageway up to Inverness as soon as possible, and surely Scotland can join the rest of the UK and allow 50mph for HGVs on A roads!’
Not surprisingly, Scotland also
differs from England in the customer speci cation of trucks, with a 450 pusher being popular down south, but a tag axle tractor unit with a higher horse power is more popular in Scotland. Also, tippers tend to have higher horse power north of the border,’ con rmed Colbourne.
Looking at the dealership map of the United Kingdom, Scania splits 50/50 between wholly owned dealers and private enterprise outlets, although in Scotland all eight dealers are owned by Scania.
Martin Hay con rms that recent additions to the dealer network have
been the opening of Bridgewater and the forthcoming commissioning of Gatwick
in the rst week in April and, while Dundee is now fully functioning, the of cial opening of the depot will take place in
late spring.
A new Scania L Series 26-tonne low-entry truck for City Lifting Ltd
‘We intend to carry out a full review of our dealer network at the end of quarter one,’ he con rmed, ‘and we are improving customer facilities at our workshops as part of an ongoing development programme.’
Looking more closely at the Dundee operation, the depot boasts nine technicians with Lindsay Duncan the general manager in charge. Opening hours are 6am to midnight although, suggests Colbourne, ‘whereas that may be the ideal set-up
for technicians, customers on the other hand really want trucks to be worked on overnight and at the weekends.
‘We are working hard towards bringing the two concepts together and in fact at Bellshill we are operating on a 24/7 basis. However what will be more useful in the future is the fact that the truck itself will know when it needs to come in for a service and exactly what parts will be required when it arrives!’
‘We are already seeing the rst fruits
of this technology in our new Scania range and this is another aspect of the speci cation that is appealing to road haulage operators and has resulted in a record order intake for Scania GB in 2018 which might take us to the top of Scania’s ‘big three’ markets ie: UK, Brazil and Germany,’ concluded Martin Hay.
28 YEARS WITH SCANIA
30 APRIL 2019 > COMMERCIAL VEHICLE ENGINEER