11.03.2012

Smart opens in Manchester

UK-based vehicle mounted lift rental company Smart Platform Rentals has officially opened its third location in Manchester.

The new 625 square metre (6,700sqft) facility is located in Trafford Park, close to Manchester’s M60 orbital road and the M6 motorway. The depot is intended to serve Greater Manchester, Merseyside, Lancashire and Cheshire.

The opening comes 10 years after the founding of Smart as a self-drive vehicle mounted lift rental company in the London area. With the new opening the company now operates from three locations: Hemel Hempstead covering the south east, Sutton Coldfield for the Midlands and now Manchester.
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Smart's new depot in Manchester

Smart’s commercial director Guy Willett said: “The new depot was conceived in response to the growing demand from a large proportion of our client base for wider national coverage. The branch runs a fleet of truck, van, 4x4 and tracked access platforms. We pride ourselves on having a wide choice of platforms, a very low average platform age and a very high model consistency.”

“We proved that the self-drive 3.5 tonne truck mount model was what many contractors had been desperately wanting. Hitting multiple sites on the one hire, spot hiring sometimes just for a day, being able to drive on a standard car licence and not having to pay the high delivery/collection costs for self-propelled kit or the relatively expensive rates for an operated truck mount made perfect sense to them,” adds Willett.

The depot opening also coincides with the thousandth candidate to have received IPAF training from Smart. “Training has proven to be an extremely successful additional service. Particularly considering we’ve reached this milestone after having only offered it directly in the last two years. As with all of our sites Manchester can offer IPAF training on self-propelled boom and scissor lifts as well as our vehicle mounts. We even offer PASMA accredited portable tower training for clients who don’t even use powered access. So if you work at height then we’re confident we can help you,” said Willett.