BT Fleet Solutions has partnered with Xpress Centres to increase its body repair service capacity and cut vehicle off-road time.

The company currently has 200 fixed site body repair locations, more than 150 mobile body repair technicians and 65 owned mechanical workshops.

To increase its capacity and to reduce repair times, the deal with automotive body repairs specialist Xpress Centres will create ‘repair pods’ that will share sites with its mechanical workshops.

Xpress Centres will be providing the repair pod and the staff for the joint venture, which will give the ability to also schedule body repair in at the same time as other work in the workshop.

The first repair pod has been placed at BT Fleet Solution’s Wimbledon site with other repair pods already planned for Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Motherwell, and Bristol.

BT Fleet Solutions is also conducting an exclusive trial with Autoglass BodyRepair, which sees the mobile repair service provider using BT vehicles as the test subjects for its new larger mobile repair unit, which has been designed to accommodate high roof LCVs.

Its current mobile repair unit faces height restrictions so is unable to accommodate high roofs or vans with mounted equipment.

The model being tested will mean more repairs can be deployed to same day repair body repair solutions.

Henry Brace, managing director at BT Fleet Solutions, said: “Capacity issues are a challenge both we and our customers face making it difficult for us to deliver on the goal of maximising vehicle availability.

“As a leader in the fleet management industry, we felt we were ideally placed to bring in new ways of working with the likes of Xpress Centres, while also helping to improve services with long-time partner Autoglass BodyRepair.”

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