When your customers are businesses dependent on refrigeration equipment and rely on you to supply and maintain it, then it is essential that your fleet of breakdown trucks is 100% reliable. That’s why Longhurst Refrigeration chose commercial vehicle contract hire and fleet management company, Prohire Limited as its fleet management partner. With Longhurst Refrigeration also a supplier to Prohire’s own temperature-controlled contract hire and rental fleet, it is a two-way relationship and one that has gone from strength to strength.
Longhurst Refrigeration Limited was started in 2014 by Denise and Jason Longhurst and was recognised as Transport Refrigeration Service Provider of the Year at the TCS&D Awards in 2016 and 2018. The company offers 24-hour transport refrigeration repair and service provision to temperature-controlled vehicle operators in the South of England. It has eight engineers and an apprentice – with over 40 years Carrier Transicold experience and 50 years Thermo King experience between them.
Company Director, Jason Longhurst explained, “This business is devoted to keeping its customers’ vehicles on the road 24 hours a day, seven days a week as they should be; and we are particularly proud of our ‘first time fix’ track record. To achieve and maintain the reliable and trustworthy reputation we have, it is vital that our own fleet of breakdown vans are equally reliable, so the relationship with Prohire is very important.
“The company is growing fast thanks to the quality and hard work of our engineers, and while I can ensure we only recruit the right people, I rely on Prohire to supply and manage their vehicles. This makes for a great two-way relationship as Prohire can also rely on Longhurst Refrigeration to support its temperature-controlled vehicles as it expands in this sensitive and time critical market. Being able to offer our customers great coverage and accurate ETAs in the event of problems on the road is crucial and I know that our reliability owes a great deal to Prohire’s.”
Prohire provides Longhurst Refrigeration with Mercedes Sprinter panel vans and supplied and has just supplied the eighth of these back in November. Jason continued, “In this business, with perishable and often high value goods involved, communication is vital throughout the chain from our suppliers to us to our customers and their customers, so that everyone knows what to expect. That’s another reason that Prohire is such a good fit for us. We have a great connection with the Prohire team, from the accounts department, through account management, right to the top. The approachability and willingness to listen, combined with the flexibility of service makes the relationship work as both company’s grow and prosper.”
Mike Hunter, Sales Manager at Prohire added, ‘Temperature-controlled is a specialised market technically and both fleet uptime and vehicle appearance are critical. We are proud to work with Longhurst Refrigeration, supporting its success and to the obvious satisfaction of its customers.”
Prohire supplies commercial vehicles and full fleet support services to a wide range of business sectors including foodservice and catering, chilled food and pharmaceuticals, builders’ merchants, leisure retail and the brewing industry as well as specialist logistics companies.
For further details about Prohire Limited’s services, please contact: 08432 909 089 or email [email protected]
