Peter Salt is the Waste Services Operations Manager for Middlesbrough Council. He is responsible for the collection of refuse and waste across the whole of Middlesbrough with 25 RCV within the fleet covering the city centre and its urban residential areas.

The council has a long-standing relationship with VT and over the past decade, they have installed a mixture of recording and camera solutions to enhance their vehicle safety.

The council had a competitor security system installed on a vehicle in their fleet, with the objective of preventing the theft of a vehicle, especially when operating in areas with a high crime rate.

However, there were a number of issues concerning the system. Drivers were able to bypass the system by leaving their fobs on the seat and if the system was down it disabled the vehicle with no way of overriding it, causing a huge amount of downtime. Peter explains his primary concern “Drivers are responsible for the £180,000 26 tonne vehicles and we are trying to protect both our operators and assets”

After a discussion with VT outlining his concerns and issues, we introduced Peter to VT IDENT, our own security system developed using passive RFID where the drivers and operators are required to wear a tag unique to their position that needs to be presented to control readers placed in the vehicle. The system cannot be bypassed as the tags have to be presented by the user to allow access to the vehicle or machinery. VT IDENT‘s master key switch allows Peter to disable the system so the vehicle can be driven back to the depot if there is a fault with the vehicle.

Peter has now started to roll out the system across the full fleet and the reaction from operators has been extremely positive. Peter tells us ” Our staff like the system, it’s easy to use and quick so they can get on with their daily routine,”. Although Peter requires driver tags he gives us his thoughts on the additional security features “I think having the different levels of authority is fantastic. We currently use VT IDENT to control the ignition and handbrake, but controlling the rear machinery is something we are looking to implement and is clearly a safety feature the industry requires.