Commercial vehicle group invests £4m in new service centre
A commercial vehicle dealer has created new jobs with a £4m investment into a purpose-built service centre in Birmingham.
The Hartshorne Group has opened the new facility on a two-acre site off Chester Road in Erdington.
The Volvo Truck & Bus depot will employ around 35 people, including a team of skilled engineers and technicians who will service vehicles for truck, bus and coach operators across the West Midlands.
Halesowen-based A & H Construction and Development was sub-contracted to build the new depot for Hartshorne, which has been supplying commercial vehicles in the region since 1968.
Martin Cronin, Hartshorne’s managing director, said: “We’re very proud to have enjoyed a long association with our customers in Birmingham, who rightly expect a fast and efficient service. Our new depot is perfectly located and has been designed from scratch in order to offer maximum convenience and vehicle uptime.”
The depot is equipped with 10 drive-through bays, which will be used for servicing, repairing and conducting MOT tests.
A dedicated tachograph bay has also been installed to speed up responses for important repairs and calibrations.
The depot replaces Hartshorne’s existing site in Gravelly Industrial Park and will create 15 new jobs to complement the 20 existing staff, who will transfer across from the old depot.
The new building is equipped with latest energy saving measures and is of sufficient scale to enable Hartshorne to hold £1m worth of parts to ensure quicker turnaround times.
Hartshorne Group is a subsidiary of the Hartshorne Crossroads Group, a privately-owned Volvo Truck and Bus Dealer Group with a turnover of c. £200m. The dealer group employs 750 people and operates 20 distributorships across The Midlands, Yorkshire and Lincolnshire.
