Partner Article

Tyneside firm tracks Arriva buses

Transport firm Arriva has teamed up with a South Tyneside company to improve their bus scheduling and monitoring.

Arriva will use Boldon-based company Fleetm8’s satellite technology to track its buses in Glasgow.

Marketing director Neil Herron said: “The new equipment has been tailored to monitor buses by the second, ensuring they are staggered. All your buses coming at once will become a thing of the past.

“We’re doing trials with some major transport companies in London and we have a number of new inventions in the pipeline.” Mr Herron, 46, and business partner, Dr Phillip Tann, 47, founded Fleetm8 in autumn 2008.

Mr Herron said: “After the invention of the vehicle tracking system, which offers clients the opportunity to track the exact location of their fleet in real time, we’ve also been working on a range of new products.

“We can offer clients virtual loading bays, the latest in anti-theft technology and are developing highly visible traffic signs – lollipop sticks – to make the walk to school safer for children.”

The company recently received a grant from South Tyneside Council to help with capital expenditure.

“The help we have had from the council has been fantastic,” added Mr Herron. “Fleetm8 has 15 staff, but over the next 18 months as we take our new products to market, we hope to expand and take on up to 50 people generating more jobs in the region and bringing prosperity to the North East.”

Coun Michael Clare, Lead Member for Jobs, Enterprise and Regeneration for South Tyneside Council, said: “It’s just incredible the world’s most accurate commercial vehicle tracking system is based right here in South Tyneside.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .