Clearabee & Road Safety Week

Clearabee is the UK’s largest rubbish clearance company. We directly operate a large fleet of waste collection vehicles all over the country. We offset all of the carbon from our clearance vehicles; since 2018, we have planted over 18,000 trees in the UK. We are proud to say that as a company, we are carbon neutral.

With Road Safety week having just passed for 2019, we have outlined how we operate our fleet. We have included some of the initiatives we have to reduce further risk on the road. This is particularly important as the rubbish clearance, skip hire, waste and recycling industry is considered high risk with more accidents compared to other industries. Therefore, is important for us to ensure the safety of our team and other road users.

The Clearabee ‘waste clearance’ fleet

We operate a mixed fleet of over 100 vehicles (110 as of November 2019) and our fleet is growing every single month. You may have seen our vehicles driving around the UK. This makes us a sizeable fleet operator and we also directly employ almost 300 staff which includes our drivers and the staff in our Birmingham office.

As we undertake a large variety of jobs we operate a mixed fleet. Our in-house fleet of vehicles includes tippers which are perfect for construction waste. There’s also lutons which are great for bulky waste, sofa removal, house clearances and office clearances. Finally, our vans are well suited when access is limited or restricted.

We also have access to HGV’s including grab lorries, moffett trucks and skip lorries. These are great for the bigger jobs where these vehicles are more suitable.

New Clearabee rubbish removal vehicles are built on an advanced lightweight aluminium chassis. So, whilst they may look like other trucks on the road, they are substantially lighter. This means that they will significantly reduce fuel consumption and carbon emissions. Currently over 90% of our in-house waste collection fleet is built to a EURO 6 standard. We currently have so many new vehicles arriving every month and old vehicles being retired. As we replace vehicles, we are getting closer to our aim to have a 100% EURO 6 fleet in 2020. This will give us one of the most modern and environmentally friendly fleets in the waste industry.

Safety on the road in waste

Even with a modern and varied fleet it still needs to be operated safely to protect our team and other road users. We have implemented a number of measures and made substantial financial commitments. Our target is to make ours the safest rubbish clearance fleet in the country whilst still remaining carbon neutral.

Reducing mileage between clearances

First of all, one of the best ways to reduce risk is to reduce the number of miles travelled. We operate from over 100 unique locations which means our clearance teams are nearly always local. So, whether you are in London, Birmingham, Edinburgh we are likely to have a team nearby. Due to our operating model and the number of clearances we action every day we typically achieve 10 – 12 miles per job across the country. This is a lot less when we are completing jobs in cities. This is great news for the environment as we are emitting less fumes.

Tracking and vehicle telematics

All of our vehicles are fully tracked with a modern tracking system. This allows us to monitor our vehicles in real time with minute by minute updates. Our tracking solution is a ‘hard’ solution meaning a physical black box which cannot just be turned off. It is supported by a soft solution via our teams’ PDA. This gives us ‘best in class’ visibility of the vehicle’s location and performance. This is also very useful for our customers and drivers. With a real time tracking link made available when the clearance team are on their way.

Driver behaviour

Our telematics system can also be used to produce real time driver behaviour and driver profile reports. This allows us to monitor how our clearance teams are driving and provide proactive guidance. If any improvements need to be made, we will be made aware. It’s important for us to know how our team is driving and performing.

5 Camera Live System

We have just signed a contract to roll out a cutting edge 5 camera live system. This will allow us to provide training and guidance to our field based waste collection teams. We will use real footage to reduce risk and identify improvements. This will be used in tandem with our dedicated in-house risk management team. We have invested over £300,000 into new vehicles. With this investment we will be able to offer the best levels of compliance and risk management. We know that this is very important to our customers.

At Clearabee, we take road safety seriously and are really pleased to introduce these measures. We hope that all of these and many others will all contribute to making our fleet of waste collection vehicles the safest and one of the greenest in the industry.