The Freight Transport Association’s Van Excellence scheme is akin to a scaled back version of rules and regulations under which heavy goods vehicle operators have to monitor and maintain their fleets.

Van Excellence was conceived as a way of addressing concerns that widespread poor compliance — on weight, for example — and minimal regulation was tarnishing the reputation of van operators, who had no way of demonstrating their professionalism to customers or compliance agencies.

The scheme has gained some heavyweight members over the last few years, including BT Fleet, Ford, and Hertz Van Rental.

One of the latest firms to join the scheme is Lancashire-based catering equipment supplier and maintenance firm, Millers Vanguard, whose 240-strong Mercedes-Benz van fleet has now been accredited by the FTA Van Excellence scheme.

Interestingly, the move to join Van Excellence was driven by the firm’s newish fleet manager, Nick Webb, who joined the company a year ago from a background in truck operations — where compliance and monitoring burdens are much heavier.

Mr Webb was keen to introduce a set of consistent, measurable standards across the company’s light commercial vehicle fleet, and said that Van Excellence appeared to be tailor-made for the purpose:

“We run 100 vans from our headquarters but the rest are out with engineers across the UK, which makes ensuring compliance and best practice even trickier than usual. Van Excellence proved to be an invaluable tool to ensure a uniform approach across the fleet; it allowed us to draw a line in the sand below which standards must never fall.

“We implemented various solutions to achieve our end goals, such as instigating daily walk-round checks and ensuring the cleanliness of vehicles. Since then we’ve been continually refining and improving our processes to make them quick and simple to implement from a driver’s point of view, and easily monitored for the fleet management team.”

Having worked through the Van Excellence list of qualifying criteria, and ensured all its standards were being met or exceeded across its fleet, Millers Vanguard submitted its application last October – then waited for the FTA to complete its comprehensive audit of a sample of 10 drivers and 10 vehicles.

There are three possible outcomes: operators are either told that they do or do not make the grade, or that they almost pass, in which case they are given a list of issues to address. Millers Vanguard passed with flying colours.