Worthy Challenger
3 April 2024
Service at the heart of hire and that is certainly the case with Challenger Site Services, which this year is celebrating its thirtieth anniversary.
The business supplies portable toilets and related servicing activities to customers throughout the north-west of England from its base in Ashton-under-Lyne.
The operation has grown steadily with a team of currently 40 people, 1,200 toilets and more than 30 vehicles.
“You could say that we’re almost as much a logistics business as a hire company,” Director Shaun Allen told me. “We make 2,000 site visits a week and that takes a lot of coordination to ensure we provide the excellent service that customers expect and value."
The business grew out of a tool hire company, Allen Hire Centre, which was founded in 1979 by engineer Don Allen (Shaun’s father) and his wife Maureen. Seeing an opportunity with the rise in demand for site welfare, ten portable toilets were added to the fleet in the early 1990s, with Challenger Site Services becoming a separate company in 1994.
As well as reflecting the ambitions of the business, the Challenger name also neatly incorporates the family surname.
The third generation of the Allen family is now actively involved in the company, with Shaun’s sons Robert and Jack also being Directors.
“We remain very busy and we haven’t noticed any downturn in demand whatsoever,” Robert told me.
Reflecting its steady growth, Challenger Site Services has added two more premises next door and opposite its headquarters, providing more yard space and a dedicated building (shown below) for maintaining the company’s delivery vehicles and vacuum pumping wagons.
Jack – who was a lawyer before joining the business full-time in 2021 – has qualified to be the company’s named transport manager, a position which Shaun currently holds.
The vehicle-servicing building also includes a training and induction room (shown below) where drivers and service personnel can gain practical experience of various types of equipment and processes, as well as health and safety guidance.
Indeed, reflecting its commitment to site safety, the company recently fitted innovative warning lights to the top of the Avant loader thats is used to move and handle toilets around the yard and on to vehicles. These cast red lines of light around the machine (shown below) to indicate a boundary and provide a visual warning for pedestrians in the vicinity.
Challenger Site Services uses MCS-rm software to manage day-to-day hire activities and also uses other modules from the company to plan service routes and optimise fuel consumption, as well as handling transactions digitally to reduce paperwork.
The business also supplies bulk quantities of water for various site requirements, as well as for industrial applications and purposes such as filling domestic swimming pools.
Challenger Site Services promotes sustainability throughout its business, having achieved the ISO 14001 environmental standard and invested in vehicles with the latest Euro 6 diesel engines. Other eco-friendly measures include supplying recycled toilet paper as standard and buying cleaning agents supplied by Safechem in bulk to avoid wastage.
The team certainly continues to focus on the future. The company is in the process of rolling out stylish new corporate branding and they say they are always on the lookout for new opportunities.
Pictured above are, from left, Jack, Shaun and Robert Allen.
Photos: Alan Guthrie
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