London Hire – 25 years at the top

Structure

Anne Grainger, General Manager, who has worked for London Hire for many years

London Hire is actually a group of seven companies, split into separate operations, each with its own team. All operate under the control of General Manager, Anne Grainger. Like many of the management team, Anne has been with the company for years. No aloof boss Anne, she operates right at the centre of operations as part of the team. In fact, teamwork is a feature of the operation. Staff may have specific roles but everyone works together and helps each other out when necessary, whatever it takes to support the customer and benefit London Hire.

The general administration office which controls all the vehicles operated by the company

Beneath Anne the business splits into five sections. Finance is under the control of Sue Weller and her team, Admin under Alan Sharpe and his team, and Maintenance under Controller, Colin Mackenzie and his team, which includes Colin Cooper who is in charge of the workshop. Facing the customer are a further two sections. Rental and Customer Service is under the control of Manager, Linda Scahill and her team and Sales and Marketing which is the responsibility of Account Manager, Peter Moxom and his deputy, Account Manager for the Midlands and the North of England, John Shier. John is a recent addition and will be familiar to many readers from his many years with Richards and Shaw and more recently with Frank Riola at Abacus Seating.

One thing you will notice at London Hire is the many young people employed. London Hire is passionate about helping young people and uses various schemes including apprenticeships to develop their skills. As the Managers say, ‘they are the future.’

In total the company employs over 50 people.

The business

The London Hire business covers a number of areas. Provision of vehicles on short or long term rentals remains a key element of it but the company also has an extensive portfolio of contract hire clients, some of whom have been with them for many years.

Vehicles provided on hire include Ford Focus saloon, Toyota Prius hybrid and larger Ford Galaxy saloon cars and Ford Transit Connect vans up to large Ford Transit vans. Ford Transit long wheelbase dropside tippers with large mesh body extensions are popular with local authorities because they can cover a wide range of work, especially leaf clearing at this time of year.

Alongside these are the contract hire fleet which can be whatever the client wants. The key to London Hire’s success is their fully flexible approach to rental; not tying their client’s into long term commitment but still offering the full benefits of contract hire.

To give you some idea of the scale of these parts of the business, London Hire currently operates a fleet of 800 cars and LCVs on rental and contract hire.

Passenger

London Hire are trialling the new 4.5 tonne Renault Master against the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter and VW Crafter

The last Mercedes-Benz Varios to join the fleet were a batch of these 31/32 seaters built by Mellor

Provision of accessible passenger vehicles has, as I said earlier, been a key element of the London Hire business from the early days. The rental fleet currently numbers 600, not including vehicles on contract hire, and is growing.

The smallest vehicles are Renault Masters with nine seats including the driver and one cab passenger, leaving seven seats in the saloon. All saloon seats are on tracks with NMI quick removal equipment allowing the vehicle to be easily adapted to carry up to three wheelchairs. Wheelchair loading is via the rear doors and PLS in-board tail lifts. Next come a range of 14 to 16 seat van conversions built on Mercedes-Benz Sprinter, VW Crafter and more recently also Renault Master base vehicles. These have either rear underfloor cassette type tail lifts or in-board lifts and can carry up to five wheelchairs. Alongside the van conversions London Hire also operate a large fleet of coachbuilt 16 seaters based on the Sprinter and Crafter, all fitted with rear underfloor cassette type tail lifts. They can carry up to five wheelchairs. The fleet already contains vehicles built on the new Euro6 Sprinter.

The largest buses offered are coachbuilt Mercedes-Benz Varios. These are available in 22 and 24 seat conventional form or in coach style with 31 or 32 seats. Wheelchair loading is by rear underfloor cassette type lifts. Depending on size they carry up to eight wheelchairs.