Like the other Sprinters, the latest addition is supplied by dealer Roanza Truck & Van on full contract hire from VMS Fleet Management. The landmark vehicle is a Sprinter 314 CDI with temperature-controlled body conversion by Paneltex.
The retailer also operates 500 chassis cabs with insulated box bodies, 300 of which are Mercedes – the remaining 200 will be replaced by Sprinters within six months, says Iceland.
Iceland’s commercial fleet manager Alex McKinlay says: “Our online shopping customers rightly expect their deliveries to arrive within the time slot they’ve booked, so vehicle availability is crucial... The Sprinter has proved extremely reliable, which helps to explain why we’ve invested in so many.”
As well as vehicle reliability, the relationship with the dealer is crucial for Iceland.
For example, Iceland was experiencing starting problems when vehicles were off the road for any length of time, usually due to a simple error such as the driver leaving an interior light on. Iceland and Roanza worked together to find a solution – in this case, using the Sprinter’s optional parametric special modules (PSMs), or control units, to resolve the problem.
Roanza’s Nigel Lewin explains: “I tasked our technician Lan Dempsey to investigate adjustments to the PSM which would drastically reduce the incidence of flattened batteries, while also addressing some other issues raised by Iceland, such as minor body damage caused by low-speed accidents.”
Dempsey – a former Mercedes-Benz commercial vehicle technical apprentice of the year – devised a programme which not only monitors battery voltage and turns off interior lights automatically if they are accidentally left on, but also limits the vehicle’s top speed and maximum reversing speed, and flashes the hazard lights when reverse gear is selected.
Iceland decided to specify PSM modules with Dempsey’s suite of settings on its next batch of vans – and the non-start incidents have dropped from 30% to 5%.
“This is a fantastic turnaround,” says McKinlay. “It’s produced exactly the result we wanted, and made a tangible difference to our ability to deliver a top-quality service to our own customers.
“We’re now specifying the PSM programme on all new Sprinters and looking forward to even more vehicle uptime as a result.”