Hartshorne Motor Services, distributor for Volvo Trucks, has opened a new £4 million dealership in Erdington, Birmingham.

The new property, off Chester Road, replaces Hartshorne’s existing depot two miles away in Gravelly Industrial Park and creates around 15 new jobs to complement the 20 existing staff who have transferred across from the old building.

The main structure is based on 10 work bays and contains separate service lanes, an authorised testing facility and a dedicated tachograph bay aimed at speeding up response times for repairs or calibrations.

Fronting the integrated two level office block is a reception area that includes driver waiting facilities.

The new building is equipped with energy saving measures and is of sufficient scale to hold £1m worth of Volvo parts and containing £500,000 of new special tooling and equipment.

Further investment of more than £150,000 in new apprentices joining the existing second and third years continues to bring talent into the Heavy Commercial training programs run by Hartshorne.

Hartshorne Group’s managing director Martin Cronin said: “We are very proud to have enjoyed a long association with our customers in Birmingham, who rightly expect a fast and efficient service.

"Our new depot has been designed from scratch in order to deliver maximum vehicle uptime.”

Hartshorne Group is a subsidiary of the Hartshorne Crossroads Group, a privately owned Volvo Truck and Bus Dealer Group with a turnover of c. £200 million.

The dealer group employs 750 people and operates from 22 dealerships and VMU’s across The Midlands, Yorkshire and Lincolnshire.