Taking on a retail unit means a fortnight of collections that nobody budgeted time for. Shelving from one supplier, a counter from a joiner, flooring from a trade counter, lighting from a wholesaler and a hundred small things from wherever they happen to be in stock. Arranging van hire in Warrington for the duration is usually cheaper and far less stressful than paying delivery charges on every order and then waiting in for them. A shop fit out is a logistics job as much as a building one.
Why Fit Outs Run On Their Own Timetable
The thing that makes a retail fit out different from a domestic project is that the work has to happen in sequence and the deliveries never arrive in that sequence. Flooring cannot go down until the electrician has finished, shelving cannot go up until the flooring is down, and the stock cannot arrive until the shelving is up. Meanwhile suppliers deliver when it suits them, which is frequently the week before you need it and occasionally the week after. Having a vehicle available means you collect things when you need them rather than storing a shop’s worth of fittings in a unit you are still working in. It also means that when something arrives damaged or wrong, which on most fit outs is not a question of if, you can go and swap it the same day instead of losing three days to a returns process.
Town Centre Access And Loading Restrictions
Warrington town centre and the retail parades around it come with loading rules that are easy to overlook until a warden appears. Pedestrianised stretches usually permit vehicle access only during set morning hours, some parades have shared rear service yards that are blocked by whoever unloaded first, and a good many older units have their only access through the shop front itself. Establish before the first delivery where you can legally stop, for how long, and whether there is a rear door at all. If the unit only loads from the front during a morning window, that dictates the working pattern for the whole fit out and it is far better to know in week one. Units on the parades around Golborne van hire and Newton-le-Willows van hire tend to be easier on this than a town centre pitch.
Why A Tail Lift Changes The Job
Shopfitting involves a lot of items that are heavy, flat and impossible to carry through a doorway without two people and a certain amount of swearing. Glass display units, gondola shelving in bulk, a made-to-measure counter, a chest freezer or a pallet of floor tiles all fall into that category. A Luton van with tail lift takes the lifting out of the transfer between the deck and the pavement entirely, which matters most when you are working alone or with one other person. It also means a pallet can go from a trade counter’s forklift onto the lift and down onto the shop floor without ever being broken down and carried by hand, and our guide to how much a Luton van carries covers what will actually fit in the body.
Collecting Materials In The Right Order
The discipline that keeps a fit out on schedule is refusing to collect things too early. An empty unit with a compressor and a chop saw in it is a workshop. The same unit with the shelving, the stock, the signage and the counter stacked in the middle of it is a storage facility that the trades cannot work in. Collect flooring and fixings first, fittings when the surfaces are done and stock last of all. Where a supplier will only release an order on a particular day, take it and store it off site rather than filling the unit. Our advice on van hire for decorating materials covers the earlier stage of the same job.
Hiring For A Fortnight Rather Than By The Day
Most fit outs need a vehicle on and off for two or three weeks rather than for one big delivery day. Short and long term hire are both available and no deposit is required on most vehicles, so keeping a van for the duration is usually the simpler arrangement. It removes the daily drive to our depot, it means you can react when a supplier rings to say something is ready, and it lets you take waste and packaging away as you go rather than accumulating it in the unit. If the schedule is fixed, booking at least two weeks ahead brings a ten per cent advance booking discount on selected vehicles.
Collecting From Tilley Street
Our depot sits on Tilley Street at the main entrance to Cockhedge Shopping Centre next to Asda, which puts it a few minutes from the town centre units and straight onto the routes out towards the retail parks and the industrial estates. There is free secure parking on site if you are leaving a vehicle with us for the duration. Bring a photocard licence and a DVLA check code, which is what we need at the counter rather than a credit card. Every van in our fleet of over seventy sits at or under three and a half tonnes gross vehicle weight and can be driven on a standard category B car licence, so there is no need to find a driver with anything extra. Anything you are unsure about, our contact us page will reach the depot.
Taking Waste And Packaging Away As You Go
A fit out generates a startling amount of rubbish and almost none of it can go in a domestic bin. Flooring offcuts, pallets, shrink wrap, plasterboard trimmings, cable drums and the cardboard from every single fitting all accumulate in the one space you are trying to work in. Having a vehicle on site means the pile leaves the unit at the end of each day instead of building up until it blocks the back door. Bear in mind that waste from a commercial fit out counts as trade waste rather than household waste, so a household recycling centre is not the right destination and different rules apply. Check with the council or arrange a licensed carrier before the first load rather than turning up and being sent away. Keeping clean packaging separate from genuine rubbish also makes returning a wrongly supplied fitting far easier, since most suppliers want it back in its original box.
Tell us how long the fit out is scheduled to run and what the loading access at the unit looks like, and we will work out the arrangement that costs you the least standing about. Call the depot on 01925 396 222 before the first delivery lands.
