In the waste management world, standardisation is often considered to be the recipe for success: having uniform types of lorries reduces maintenance costs, simplifies the procurement of spare parts and ensures drivers use the same routine processes for carrying out their tasks. REMONDIS Medison has deliberately chosen to take a different route. Rather than go for uniformity, the company wishes to have a variety of task-specific vehicles. Each individual category is then standardised. Operating a diverse fleet of vehicles reflects the company’s concept of being able to offer each of its customers the exact transport solution they need – whether they be a small GP surgery or a large hospital or industrial business – to ensure that healthcare waste and small volumes of hazardous waste are collected and transported safely in line with all rules and regulations. This is precisely the reason why the company’s Lünen branch now has three new specialist vehicles.
The three new DAF trucks each have a permissible total gross weight of 18 tonnes and have been adapted to meet REMONDIS Medison’s precise needs. Equipped with an integrated digital weighing device, modern systems for securing loads, a complete set of hazmat equipment and insulated cool boxes for temperature-sensitive waste, the vehicles reflect the very highest safety, efficiency and technological standards.
REMONDIS Medison currently has over 130 specialist vehicles – from versatile vans for serving customers located in city centres, to powerful 40-tonne trucks for picking up waste from large firms – to make sure it can provide a trouble-free, reliable and professional collection service. Its flexible transport solutions ensure that each and every logistical challenge is mastered without a problem: the versatile vans are used for travelling through narrow urban streets and the larger lorries for serving hospitals and large industrial businesses. Its swap body vehicles enable full swap bodies to be quickly exchanged for empty ones on site at its customers’.
One of the fleet’s highlights is its COMBI truck (German: KOMBI). As the name suggests, this particular vehicle combines two different systems: it unites the functions of a conventional swap body vehicle with those of a hook-lift system. This means that the COMBI truck is not only able to transport swap bodies but can also pick up and ship transport containers – and all this with just one truck.
REMONDIS Medison is the specialist within the REMONDIS Group for handling healthcare waste. Its focus is on delivering bespoke waste management solutions for hospitals, laboratories, GP surgeries and other medical institutions to ensure it meets their stringent safety, sustainability and cost efficiency requirements. Besides delivering its core services, REMONDIS Medison has also expanded its portfolio to include a number of targeted services that enable its customers to access additional synergies.
These include, for example, providing solutions to recover precious metals, to recycle and fill solvents and to clean parts and paint sprayers as well as operating a specialist logistics system for managing small volumes of hazardous waste. Furthermore, it also offers seminars and provides advice on handling waste and hazardous materials. The company has around 450 employees and a network of thirteen business locations across Germany. Its fleet currently consists of around 130 vehicles.
Being the only business in Germany to run a nationwide system dedicated to healthcare waste and small volumes of hazardous waste, REMONDIS Medison operates an efficient logistics network with seven transhipment sites, where the incoming materials are transferred so they can be sent on for recycling or disposal. The wide range of waste types are not the only challenge here. As these materials are hazardous and must be handled safely, there are stringent rules in place that demand the highest levels of professionalism and technical know-how.
What’s more, the overall fleet is both modern and efficient: with the vehicles having an average age of around 4½ years, it is rare that a technical defect prevents them from being used. Every lorry must leave the fleet after around eight to ten years to keep a lid on the maintenance and repair costs. Logistics manager Frederik Budde, however, stressed that the company’s focus is not only on vehicle operability: “Efficiency and safety are not the only reasons why we have trucks that are driver-friendly and equipped with modern systems. We also wish to show how much we appreciate our drivers. They play a key role in our business every single day – and so it goes without saying that they should be able to carry out their work in modern and reliable vehicles.”
At the same time, the company is looking ahead towards the future: having carried out successful trial runs, the first electric truck will soon be joining the fleet. A more sustainable fleet goes hand in hand with satisfied drivers at REMONDIS Medison.
Bildnachweise: © REMONDIS
