You now trade under the name Dawsongroup emc. What prompted the change?

Local authorities are the bedrock of this business. Everything that we do outside of the public sector is done off the back of what we’ve done with local authorities. It’s allowed us to branch out into different products and different services. This is why we’re trading under a new name. The old name didn’t fit what we do now. Our current product portfolio includes everything ranging from compact sweepers through to suction excavators.

What sets Dawsongroup emc apart from their competitors?

Around 65-70% of our customer base is local authorities and yet interestingly they only generate about a third of our profits. This is because the type of equipment they take off us is difficult to maintain and costly, but it’s also because we don’t take advantage of them. As part of a £400m turnover, family-owned group, we look to work with both our existing customer base and any potential new customers to offer the right product at the right price and, in turn, offer best value.

Could you say a bit more about what you offer?

As well as our public service ethos, we have 35 engineers nationwide. We’ve got four workshops: in Scotland, the north of England, London, and one in Avonmouth that supports the south west and south Wales. We can get a machine back on the road within 48 hours because of our engineering support. We have a 94% first time fix rate and our average response time is about 3 to 4.5 hours. For local authorities, there is reassurance that we won’t leave them high and dry.

Dawsongroup emc has made substantial investments into zero emission vehicles, such as the Bucher MaxPowa V65e truck mounted sweeper. What was the thinking behind this decision?

Everybody has known for a long time about clean air zones and net zero. We are the leader in the market. We are investing heavily in the offering of electric vehicles because we believe in supporting local authorities in their drive to net zero. It goes against the culture of the organization to not support our local authority base.

But it’s about more than investing in vehicles, isn’t it? It’s also training…

With diesel vehicles you can walk up to any transport manager and ask: do you want one of these? You can’t do that with electric. If you put a metal spanner in the wrong place in an electric sweeper, it will kill you. They have to be trained before they use it. So all our engineers are trained up to Level 4 to be able to work on these machines. Just investing in our people to get them to the required level to work on the electric vehicles – it’s well in excess of six figures. It’s a capital investment. It means we’re investing in our people.

Local authorities can find fleet decarbonisation daunting. Dawsongroup emc argues that renting helps ‘de-risk’ ownership. Could you explain how?

The capital outlay for an electric sweeper is about four-and-a-half times the cost of a diesel one. Most councils don’t have the budget to buy these machines or train their employees. Purchasing an electric sweeper is a huge investment and a big risk for councils with overstretched budgets. Give us the risk. Don’t buy the vehicle, contract hire it. We are flexible and we’ll train you professionally. And when there are advances in, for example, the battery technology, we’ll be able to spot that coming and we can have that conversation.

This interview originally appeared in the autumn issue of LAPV. To subscribe for free click here.