Wincanton has been awarded a three-year contract to distribute Shell Gas’ aerosol propellant gas to 28 manufacturing customers throughout the UK.
According to Chris Ridel of Shell Gas, the contract was awarded on the strength of Wincanton’s capabilities in handling and distributing hazardous substances, as well as its ability to devise cost effective methods of distribution.
The contract, which operates 24/7, utilises thirteen LPG tankers operating at 44 tonnes, in addition to eleven new DAF tractor units, and moves around 900 tonnes of aerosol gas per week.
Wincanton’s managing director – industrial, Gordon Scott, said that the main challenge of this contract is the location of the loading terminal in relation to Shell's customer base, with many delivery destinations being too far away to reach in a driver shift.
In order to manage a complex distribution process and meet customer-specific delivery requirements, eighteen drivers work on the contract to cover the driving shift patterns and comply with the Working Time Directive.
Collecting from the Shell terminal in Fife, Scotland, Wincanton worked closely with Shell to implement a routing system to include drivers loading, trunking from Scotland and delivering from an out-base in Preston.
The operation is split into two parts with an overnight trunking operation to Preston from where drivers then deliver direct to the customer or to storage tanks at the Stanlow depot. The second part of the operation is run as a four-day rotating shift system, in which drivers and vehicles make numerous deliveries, reloading from the Stanlow site, before returning to Scotland.
