Multi-million pound investment in AO fleet

The electricals retailer AO has made an investment of more than £2m in its fleet.

By 2030 the company wants to run 90% of its vehicles on compressed natural gas (CNG). To achieve this goal AO added 10 CNG-powered Iveco tractor units to its fleet in 2022 and an additional 10 since then. This is estimated to cut up to 85% of CO2 emissions compared to running equivalent vehicles on diesel. 

To accompany the 4x2 tractor units has taken delivery of 20 moving-deck double-deck longer semi-trailers (LSTs) from Tiger Trailers. At 2.05m longer than AO’s standard trailers, the LSTs allow the firm to increase capacity by 10%. This results in a load space that can be double stacked on the upper and lower decks and loaded four products wide. 

David Ashwell, group logistics director at AO, said: “We are proud to be continuing our move to a more sustainable future that will hopefully see 90% of our fleet running on CNG by 2030. These tractor units and the new LSTs allow us to reduce our carbon footprint and save on costs. Crucially it significantly increases our capacity, which enables us to deliver even better service to our customers.”

The new trailers will be put to work transporting appliances from AO’s Crewe warehouse to distribution centres across the UK. The latest additions mean AO now has a fleet of more than 300 units from Tiger Trailers. Nine years ago, Tiger Trailers first supplied AO with its LST product which is now in its sixth generation. 

Darren Holland, sales director of Tiger Trailers, said: “It’s great to work with the entire AO team and we look forward to enhancing the current builds into the next generation at each enquiry stage. The evolution from the original trailers supplied in 2015 that gave an increase of 14% in load capacity back then to the new trailers which are gaining a further 10% is great to see.”