At Barleylands Depot in Basildon, Essex, UK, refuse collection vehicles pull out before dawn to run the borough's curbside rounds. For the more than 190,000 residents of Basildon Borough, the collection either happens or it doesn't – nobody on the doorstep cares who owns the truck, who maintains it, or how the contract behind it is structured. Get it right and the operation becomes invisible; get it wrong and it is the first thing anyone notices.

Behind that invisibility sits an arrangement that has run quietly in the borough since 2011: a contract hire partnership between Basildon Borough Council and NRG Riverside, the UK's largest municipal and specialist fleet hire company, operating close to 3,000 vehicles nationwide. NRG doesn't just supply the trucks: it runs a dedicated workshop at the council's own depot, staffed by its own team, working alongside council operations every day.

Two companies, one outcome

James Hendry, Assistant Director for Environment, Climate Change and Open Spaces at Basildon Borough Council, oversees the frontline services that depend on that fleet – recycling collections, commercial waste, open spaces, car parking and more. The council runs 56 HGVs within a wider fleet of 120 vehicles, with refuse collection built predominantly around Mercedes-Benz Econic and Dennis Eagle chassis.

The arrangement works because NRG owns the reliability risk – with contract hire, the council buys an outcome, not equipment. “Ultimately, our residents don't care who's providing the vehicles – they just want the services delivered to them,” Hendry says.

For NRG, that translates into a specific commercial promise. “One thing customers can be certain of with our model is that they've got the same costs every month,” says Liz Hardman, Head of Central Services at NRG Riverside. “They don’t need to worry about maintenance or compliance – just putting a driver in the seat and getting that service delivered to the public.”

That promise only holds if the vehicles don't let either side down, which is where NRG's specification decisions start to matter.

Specifying for uptime, not just the spec sheet Around 1,700 vehicles in NRG's specialist fleet run Allison fully automatic transmissions, representing a majority share when vehicle types where the product doesn’t apply are excluded. “We take advice from the manufacturer – they know the kit, they know what works well, the configurations that are best,” Hardman says. “A lot of our fleet is Mercedes and Dennis, and that's their preferred transmission. We are in their hands, but it's benefited us for sure.”   On the ground at Basildon, that specification decision is tested daily by David Stephens, NRG's Workshop Manager, who has worked on local authority fleets since 1985, including 28 years at a London borough before joining NRG. “From my earliest days, we've always had Allison transmissions,” Stephens says. “I don't think there's a stronger gearbox out on the market for what these guys do with them. They're easy to maintain, easier to diagnose when something goes wrong, and the backup support is second to none.”

Where the numbers show it

That endorsement shows up in the workshop's own figures. Stephens' team inspects vehicles every six weeks under the council's O-license requirements, but the transmissions themselves need far less attention: oil and filters are changed every three years, an interval Stephens attributes to the long-life fluid Allison specifies, even on duty cycles defined by constant stop-start collection work. “We get no issues whatsoever on the gearboxes,” he says. “I can't remember the last time we had a breakdown on the transmission.”
 
Driver feedback follows the same pattern. “We have no issues with the drivers and the transmissions – none at all,” Stephens says. “They don't ever complain about them or say they're difficult to use.” That reliability underpins NRG's Flexi-Hire option too, which lets the council – or any customer – bring in an additional vehicle at short notice. Because the transmission is fully automatic, a driver can step into an unfamiliar vehicle with no complicated handover regarding gear changes. “They can just jump in, drive and get on with the job,” Hardman says.

When a service issue does arise, the response runs through NRG's specialist network rather than the council. “If we've got a problem we can't fix with our own diagnostics, we'll give Allison’s Authorized Distributor, Mitchell Powersystems, a call, and they're usually straight out to get the vehicle back on the road,” Hardman says. 

Partnership that keeps pace

Basildon Borough Council and NRG Riverside meet monthly to review contract performance, including the fleet replacement cycle that typically retires vehicles around the seven-year mark, and the ongoing work of adapting vehicle specification to drivers' needs. That includes working within the tight space constraints of a day-cab refuse collection vehicle, crewed by a driver and three loaders.

For Hendry, that extends to the transmission manufacturer directly. “I've found the relationship with Allison in the UK to be very supportive,” he says. “They are very keen on getting genuine, real-life feedback from people using their products, and they take that on board.”

As UK local authorities face mounting pressure to decarbonize fleets and adapt to shifting recycling legislation against tighter budgets, the contract hire model NRG and Basildon operate absorbs that volatility without compromising the one thing residents notice: whether or not the bins get collected.

For Stephens, watching the industry evolve across four decades hasn't changed his verdict. “I've been in the industry a long time now, and they are the strongest products out there, in my personal opinion,” he says.