HB Dennis Airside Service has boosted transparency and bagged rave customer reviews with TreadReader’s DriveOver ramp tyre measurement system.
HB Dennis and Its Business Model
Based north of Dublin, close to the city’s airport, HB Dennis Airside Service specialises in Land Rovers and operates a low-volume, high-quality business model. It installed the TreadReader DriveOver ramp in May 2021, following a recommendation, and has found it to be not only a precision tool for assessing tyre condition but also a boon for customer service.
“In the past, I have known incidents where people do not believe you when you say their vehicle needs new tyres. They think you are just trying to sell them something,” says HB’s director, Laurence Poole. “The system gives us a lot of transparency. It generates a printout of all four tyres, which we give to each client. They can see a 3D image of the tread, which highlights different zones across each tyre and displays the depth. It is really quite a thorough and clever piece of kit.”
“The ramp is positioned at the front of the workshop, so the camera shows the vehicles coming in, which adds an extra layer of evidence for the client. From an operational perspective, it speeds up our ability to do a tyre tread inspection and the accuracy is excellent.”
Each scan carried out by the DriveOver ramp inspects up to 400,000 measurement points with accuracy to within 0.2mm. By scanning the full width of the tyre and 50-60mm around it, the system achieves a level of accuracy and consistency far greater than conventional analogue and digital gauges, or competitor systems which only take a single-line scan.
TreadReader DriveOver
TreadReader DriveOver is suitable for all workshops, car dealers and tyre suppliers, irrespective of the size of the operation. It is available as a surface-mounted system, as fitted at Airside Service which requires no groundworks or a flush in-ground system.
For Laurence, the DriveOver ramp’s chief benefit is customer service. He describes an occasion where a client wanted to check whether their vehicle needed new tyres, and the system was able to provide an immediate and definitive answer in seconds.
“We had a client come in one day who had been told, by a different garage, that they needed new tyres. We said, ‘Just drive over this; it is a free test and it only takes a moment.’ I looked at the results and said ‘No, you don’t need new tyres.’’
“We got a five-star Google review because we were honest, and they became a regular client. This just gives us that layer of transparency and honesty that we need in the industry. It has been a great tool for us.”
The garage is planning to expand into airport parking, offering a concierge collection service with ‘while-you-travel’ vehicle repairs. It intends to install an additional DriveOver ramp at its forthcoming off-airport parking site.
