Donarbon Waste Management opt for top dealer support

Donarbon Waste Management, part of the family-owned Dickerson Group in business for over 75 years, has taken delivery of six Volvo FM-400 8x4 trucks, taking the Volvo fleet strength to 67 out of a total fleet of 77 trucks, with a further 14 currently on order.

Mark Davenport, Managing Director said, ““The most important factor when purchasing is the full life cost of operation. It’s also the fact that the Volvo products are reliable, this coupled with good quality support when they’re older, and at reasonable cost. The best feature is their reliability and second to this the after-sales support. There’s a market for these quality trucks whenever you wish to sell. The first tranche of six 32 tonners is split 50% I-Shift and 50% manual gearboxes. We’ve had very positive feedback from the drivers on both and although it’s early days, we are getting excellent fuel economy, up to 9 mpg fully loaded.”

The vehicles are supplied through Volvo Truck and Bus Centre East Anglia based at nearby Ely. “Volvo offers the best support we have from any of the truck manufacturers,” Mark explains. “We get incredibly good support from Steve Blackmore and his team. We get reliable trucks that we rarely ever have to do any work on. The drivers like them, they find them good vehicles to operate, which keeps them motivated as they know they’re driving a quality truck.”

The additional trucks are supporting a 28 year long Government PFI (Private Finance Initiative) with a contract value of £734m over the term. The trucks are engaged in taking Cambridgeshire County Council’s household waste from the household waste recycling centres and transferring to Donarbon’s main site at Waterbeach, Cambridgeshire.

The new PFI contract will see Cambridgeshire’s waste processed through a new MBT (Mechanical Biological Treatment) plant built at Waterbeach. The new plant will separate any recyclable materials from the waste and take the organic material and compost it into a stable material which can be used as a soil, the plant also has the capacity to produce a refused derived fuel, should there be demand for such products locally.

The next batch of trucks - which are due in September - will haul aggregates, recycled track ballast from the rail industry and other recycled materials from the group’s own quarries located in the East Anglia Region. The company uses Volvo Construction Equipment to load the trucks, operating 30 loading shovels.

Customers of their sand and gravel include the Her Majesty The Queen at Sandringham, as another of the group’s subsidiary companies, Frimstone, hold the Royal warrant for the supply of crushed and graded aggregates to the Royal Estate.