Belle Haulage Ltd – Maintaining Gold

Belle Haulage Ltd is a small run company that has been around for 17 years and is now located in Barking. We have been FORS members since 2015 and we achieved our first Gold accreditation in 2016. We are proud to say we have always maintained our FORS Gold accreditation and kept our standards high by maintaining a very robust compliance system. FORS has helped us achieve this by offering training course, toolkits and support if needed. We are proud to promote FORS and its benefits to all companies we work with. FORS assists companies in maintaining and continually improving their road safety, compliance and environmental impact. The company is firmly founded on old fashioned values without being stuck in the past. We deliver a wide spectrum of waste management and recycling to the construction industry and we work directly with the major construction companies.

We came across FORS when tendering for work across London. When we looked at the requirements and benefits of joining the scheme we saw that they fitted in perfectly with our ethos of improving safety whilst complementing our drive to improve fuel efficiency and reduce our environmental impact’

We take compliance and safety very seriously. FORS did help us by providing training and tools that improved the policies and procedures with our Bronze Accreditation ‘

The performance management toolkit really helped us set our targets for reducing our carbon footprint and improving our MPG. FORS has helped us improve our filing systems and procedures as well.

‘FORS continues to help us to make improvements in all aspects of the business. Our compliance, road safety, environmental awareness and training remains at the highest standards’ – Gilbert Belle – Managing Director

The past 12 months we have updated all our Policies, Procedures, Risk Assessments and Drivers Handbook to bring them all in line with Version 5.1 of the FORS Standards.

‘Our Plan safe, work safe ethos along with the FORS standard enables Belle Haulage to compete with our peers in the industry’ – Gilbert Belle – Managing Director

• We have kept our accidents and Parking fines to zero for the past 7 years. We achieved this by making sure we always selected the best route possible to all our sites and we plan ahead before leaving the yard. FORS Gold accreditation demonstrates to all our clients and competitors that we take compliance, safety and emission awareness very seriously. Our FORS Gold accreditation continues to add value to our company, and it ensures that we maintain the high standard that is required in the construction industry

• I’m currently the only driver and I complete a comprehensive Medical Declaration on a annually basis even though the FORS Standard states once every 5 years. It’s also mentioned in the drivers handbook that if at any point in time I start suffering from a medical condition I will notify the company ASAP as well as if I need to start taking medication prescribed by my GP or over the counter drugs. We will then investigate it to see if it’s still safe for the myself to be driving for the company and we may even ask me to get a letter from my doctor informing the company if I’m still able to drive for the company. We will then start doing more driver assessments on the driver to make sure there isn’t a risk to the company or anyone on the road.
• We have recently adopted a recruitment policy to try and help us recruit young drivers into the Transport industry.
• We only use the Operating centre for parking my lorries. We don’t do any loading/ unloading on site and all our servicing is done by main dealers at their sites not ours. The only noise generated is when my lorries are idling so we can carry out our defect checks. All my lorries have white noise reversing alarms fitted to them and they are both Euro 6 compliant.
• We carry waste soil and aggregates to and from construction sites across the whole country. As we rely on our customers asking us to deliver and collect from various construction sites across the whole country, we never know where we are going until they need us. Therefore we can’t afford to try and move anything via barge or train as we collect all the waste soil and aggregates from building sites and there is no other method than using a lorry and we then asked to deliver anywhere in the country. So using a Lorry is the most cost effective way of moving our clients goods. Due to the distances our vehicles travel and the weights/type of products they carry, we haven’t found any suitable alternative vehicle. 100% of our vehicles are now Euro 6 compliant and use Adblue to help in reducing our carbon footprint and improve our MPG. We do everything possible to reduce our carbon footprint through better planning, promoting our anti- idling policy

We will continue using what FORS has taught us to improve our MPG and reduce any wasted idling we might have.’

Maintaining our FORS Gold Accreditation shows how dedicated we are as a company to improving road safety and the safety of all vulnerable road users in London as well as nationally. We will continuously use what FORS has taught us to help reduce our carbon footprint and make the roads so safer for everyone that uses them. We have also managed to make a significant saving by reducing our fuel usage and improving our MPG.