Delivering value to household names through collaboration – Gray & Adams and Gist

Gray & Adams is proud of the strong and long-standing customer relationships that it has built over the last 65 years. Working across local SME’s and household names alike, Gray & Adams take a collaborative approach to understand our customers’ businesses and needs to deliver a product will help deliver their operational, environmental, and strategic goals.

Gist provides flexible, high-integrity cold chain solutions that enable their customers to meet an increasingly challenging retail demand, with maximum efficiency, maximum product shelf life but minimum waste. Gist has a relationship with Gray & Adams that spans almost 40 years – and for the last 25 years, our key contact with Gist has been Mick Pethard, Head of Engineering.

In this issue, we catch up with Mick to discuss the newest delivery from Gray & Adams and the working partnership to date; 

“I’ve worked with Gist for 25 years and as the Head of Engineering, procurement is huge part of my role. It’s important that we work with partners and suppliers who understand our business and can be collaborative and innovative in their approach. In my experience, Gray & Adams fit that bill.”

Mick shares,

“For the last 18 months, Gray & Adams have been working with us on a fleet of 18T and 26T rigids that will service one of the most well-known customers that we have. As a safety and environmentally conscious business, it was important that Gray & Adams incorporated a number of enhanced features within the spec. The key specifications were the use of fully electric PTO fridges by Carrier Transicold within the build to reduce our environmental impact and 360-degree cameras fitted to the external body as well as internal cameras to keep our operators and the public safe.”

“We also asked Gray & Adams to incorporate fitted air curtains that will help maintain the internal temperature without the need for excess energy from the fridge to achieve this. There was quite a long list of bespoke requirements to this fleet that Gray & Adams were more than happy to deliver and advise on.”

When asked about why the enhanced specifications were so important to this order, Mick advised that they had gathered opinions from their staff on what would make their experience better, he tells us,

“Gist has a driver forum where we are able to gather feedback from employees on any issues they are facing during their day to day working lives and what we can do as employers to make their lives easier and protect them while carrying out their duties. Our people are our most important asset so it’s important we understand what our drivers and operators are dealing with at the coal face and make changes to our operations that foster a culture of continuous improvement”

“When renewing or upgrading our fleet, the most important thing for me is working with the right partner that understands what Gist are trying to achieve. I feel that Gray & Adams offer an approach that gets this right. They also have a reputation for quality and longevity of the product is something that is very important to both me and the business, so we always ensure that we purchase from suppliers who have a reputation for robust quality. Cost is of course, always a factor, but it’s not something that I place at number one priority. The product needs to be fit for purpose, that is the key thing.”

“Gist has a very strong relationship with Gray & Adams, the team are very responsive and innovative in their approach. We are also happy to report that due to the quality and the workmanship of the Gray & Adam repairs team, we have been able to refurbish some of our trailers to give them a second life which has obviously been beneficial from a number of business perspectives.”

To learn more about Gist, visit: https://www.gistworld.com/