Dennis Eagle supplied 14 Elite+ refuse collection vehicles to Biffa for its renewed Cannock Chase contract.
Biffa has managed the council’s waste and recycling since 2012 and successfully retendered for the Cannock Chase Council contract last year. The contract supports 46,000 residential properties in the heart of Staffordshire over a ten-day cycle, collecting domestic, recycling and organic waste. With a garden waste subscription of around 22,000 properties, there are approximately 56,000 lifts per week across the waste streams.
A fresh new fleet
To service the contract, Biffa has taken delivery of six 26-tonne Dennis Eagle Olympus Twin Pack Elite+ RCVs with a 65:35 split, enabling the team to collect both residential waste and recyclables on the same round.
A further eight Elite+ 26-tonne RCVs with single-compartment Olympus bodies were also delivered, with all vehicles specified with Terberg hydraulic bin lifts. With this 14-vehicle fleet dedicated to the entire contract, the operational fleet will continue to rely solely on Dennis Eagle.
Biffa’s Tony Darbyshire, Senior Business Manager, Cannock & South Staffs, said: ‘A major motivator for us is providing our teams with the best tools for the job, to make it as easy and as comfortable as possible for them to complete the work.’
This includes the visibility that the Dennis Eagle vehicles offer. ‘The seating position is good; it’s higher than others on the market, so the visibility is great with few blind spots,’ explains Tony. ‘We’ve had the 360 ° cameras on our Dennis Eagle fleets since 2018 as an additional safety measure, so the crews are used to them and find them a real benefit, too.’
Standardisation for efficiency
With the Biffa teams already familiar with Dennis Eagle RCVs, thanks to a longstanding relationship, it aimed to make the switch to new vehicles as efficient and seamless as possible.
Jamie Shepherd, Contract Supervisor at Biffa, said: ‘They’re easy to drive and use, so we try to standardise the vehicles as much as possible for consistency and ease of operation. For example, we’ve always specified the Terberg bin lifts, so we have the OmniDEL bin lifts in our new fleet. We’ve had hire trucks in the past with different lifts, but the operators prefer the Terberg ones as they’re really easy to use.’
Flexible training support
The Dennis Eagle provided Biffa’s staff with the appropriate training before the contract went live.’Our operation runs Monday to Friday; training at the start or end of a shift isn’t ideal, so Dennis Eagle agreed to hold familiarisation sessions across two Saturday mornings,’ explains Tony. ‘This was really helpful and ensured all our operators, engineers and office teams were familiar with all the new features ahead of the contract going live, particularly at the back end. It also ensured that we now have in-house people capable of delivering that training for any new staff that join us.’
A friendly helping hand
The team has also been impressed by the longstanding support of Dennis Eagle Aldridge. The Walsall-based service centre is around ten miles from the Biffa team and provides consistent help and advice across its contracts.
‘We’ve been using the Aldridge service centre since 2009 and have an excellent relationship with the team there,’ adds Jamie. ‘We’ll ring for advice, and the engineers and mechanics are always happy to talk us through things over the phone. It’s beneficial and works well for us.’
With the Biffa team trained and ready, the servicing of the renewed contract started on 1 April. ‘Having this new fleet is a real positive breath of fresh air,’ adds Tony. ‘It’s a real benefit and motivator for our teams going into a new contract with a brand-new fleet; it gives them that feel-good factor and gets a great response.’
