Blakeley’s was established over 25 years ago and offers a wide range of waste solutions throughout the North West of England. The company built a reputation for excellent service, however the increasing cost of waste processing, recycling and disposal in recent years was having a negative effect on the business’ bottom line. Without suitable software to properly analyse customers’ bins, the company was unable to charge the appropriate amount, based on the weight of its customers’ bins, and began to lose money on some collections.

Graeme Knight, Managing Director, Blakeley’s said: “The business was suffering because we couldn’t pinpoint where the really heavy loads were coming from so we didn’t know where we were losing money.”

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With no fit-for-purpose software available in the market place Blakeley’s took matters into its own hands and worked with software developers to build a bespoke system known as PurGo specifically geared to waste management operations.

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Blakeley’s first started working with VWS in 2012 when it began fitting the ENVIROWEIGH bin-weighing system to its vehicles with the aim of making its whole operation paperless. The VWS system is Weights and Measures approved and therefore can be used for pay as you throw services.

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The combination of accurate bin weighing and a reliable back office solution changed the business almost overnight. Once customers understood that their bins would be properly monitored and categorised for charging purposes, they were more cautious about waste disposal and the average weight per container reduced by 21%. As a result Blakeley’s Gross Profit more than doubled delivering an extra £1.1 m earnings per year.

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Continued Graeme: “PurGo is very user friendly and enables us to schedule and track all of our collections accurately. Combined with the ENVIROWEIGH bin weighing system from VWS, we can now weigh every bin accurately, identify where the heavy loads are and charge accordingly. The difference to our balance sheet has been huge.”

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Julian Glasspole, Managing Director, Vehicle Weighing Solutions Ltd said: “The ENVIROWEIGH bin weigher is highly accurate, to within 0.2%, and with this system Blakeley’s have been able to record the precise weight of all of its customers’ bins. PurGo takes the weights directly from each ENVIROWEIGH system and analyses the figures to produce accurate billing. The two systems work so harmoniously together and there is definitely a demand for this kind of system in the waste management sector. In fact we are so convinced of this that we have partnered with the developers to bring the software to the market place.”

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PurGo allows operators to track orders and collections, manage vehicle scheduling and dispatch workloads/run sheets, as well as keeping vehicles roadworthy and compliant with defect checking and workshop modules. The system also takes care of billing with one click invoicing and integrates with all the popular accounting packages.

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Developed as a paper less system PurGo uses Vehicle PDA’s to integrate with on-board systems such as weighing and CCTV. The PDA’s also have built in Sat Nav, which not only provide drivers with directions but also send accurate ETAs for the planned collections back to the office, and enable live or historical ‘high definition’ tracking so the location and status of every vehicle and container is known. The devices can also take photographs and capture signatures.

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The PurGo system is the only system that has been specifically developed from the ground up for waste collection industry and is now available to other waste management companies.