Fagan & Whalley boosts safety with SCC
Fagan & Whalley has embraced X-Wire technology from SCC Worldwide to help monitor blind spots at the rear of its trailers.
Founded in 1927, Fagan & Whalley has been serving customers for over 90 years. From humble beginnings with only a single truck carrying out deliveries to local villages in Lancashire, it is now a widely recognised name in road haulage throughout the UK.
The haulier has embraced the push to drive up safety standards in the industry; and the obvious place to start was the rear of its trailers, as a total blind spot for drivers and therefore the area of the vehicle that needed protecting the most. However, the company found that fitting and operating rear cameras could be difficult and impractical.
“From the word go they caused us nothing but problems, with vehicles spending days off the road due to the costly and time-consuming installation, running cables along the full length of the vehicle, and having to reconnect an extra… cable every time a tractor coupled up to a new trailer quickly became impractical,” said Adam Burgess, head of fleet engineering at Fagan & Whalley.
“In light of these issues, it wasn’t long before we scrapped rear cameras altogether and instead focused on the front and side of our vehicles, as directed by standards such as FORS and the Direct Vision Standard.
“We trialled several different products and companies but we weren’t happy with any of the solutions we’d been offered, until I reached out to SCC Worldwide and was told about their unique X-Wire technology, as this offered a solution to the rear camera issues we’d experienced previously.
“From being wholly uninterested in rear cameras, once I heard about X-Wire, I could immediately see the benefits it would bring to our fleet and pushed ahead with a trial as soon as we could.”
Since then, reports Adam, the company hasn’t looked back; and following the success of the trial, is now rolling out X-Wire technology across the whole fleet.
“Not only did this technology save us untold amounts of time, money and hassle due to much faster installs and our vehicles spending less time off the road, but it has made using rear cameras practical for us for the first time,” he explained.
“Artics make up the bulk of our fleet and anyone who operates artics will know that once a truck has dropped off a trailer, it could be weeks before it sees that same trailer again, if ever.
“With X-Wire, any of our tractors will now automatically connect up to any of our trailers, without any [extra cables] or even any additional input from the driver; they just simply connect up like they always would and everything is ready to go.
“At the end of the day, these cameras are there to make our vehicles safer, so by removing driver input from the equation, it means safety cannot be compromised by human error.”
Adam continued: “All these factors combined made installing X-Wire on our fleet a no-brainer as far as I was concerned, and that’s to say nothing of the invaluable guidance and support SCC have provided as a company throughout this whole process and beyond.
“I know that if I ever have any questions, one of their in-house technicians will be on hand to help with whatever I need, and you can’t ask for more than that.”
