Tucked away in the corner of a large gravel yard, at the top of the Allied Vehicles Lomond Street site, sits a small cabin which is home to one of Allied’s lesser-known (but no less important) departments – Defleet. This small but mighty team look after the repair needs of business customers, repairing ex-fleet vehicles before they’re sold on at their retail sites.
We had a chat with the Defleet Supervisor, Paul Shannon, to find out more about the team.
Mission and Purpose
The Defleet Department is a very busy and not well-known sub-department of Allied Bodyshop. It was formed in the latter part of 2013 and was originally set up to facilitate the refurbishment needs of one of our customers.
During its early days it was producing, on average, 1100 to 1500 completed vehicles per year with a staff of around 20 of painters, panel beaters, mechanics, estimators and valeters.
Sadly around 2020 with COVID closing the country, and Brexit making it harder to ship new vehicles into the UK, the needs of the customer’s business decreased.
The Defleet department was reduced to a small team of six, but still completes around 800 to 900 vehicles per year. The team are currently looking after two companies and are looking to expand and take on a few more.
Team Members
- Paul Shannon – Estimator/Defleet Supervisor: Has worked for the Defleet Department since 2021 and, before that, for the transport department for about four years.
- Raymond O’Brian – Panel Beater: Joined Allied in 2002, and before that he worked for the John Martin group.
- Fergus Provan – Mechanic: Has worked for Allied since 2014, and before that he worked for Phoenix Kia for 5 years.
- Scott McGovern – Painter: Has been with Allied since 2015 and before that worked for a few small companies and wanted more of a challenge.
- Donald “Donnie” Croall – Quality Control/Specialist Repair: Has worked for the company since 2018 after working for JCB for 20 years. Came to Allied for a change in career.
- Asare Afum – Valeter: Has worked for the company since late 2024 and before that he worked for a few small companies and came to Allied for a different challenge.
Day-to-Day
When a vehicle is delivered to us from one of our customers’ branches, it will be booked in and our mechanic will road test and safety check it. After that it will be estimated for refurbishment and repair costs, and the estimate sent back to the customer for approval.
Once the estimate is authorised it will go through each department in turn for each specific part of the repair e.g. Panel, Paint, Mechanical, Valet then finally Quality Control.
After it has passed QC it will be handed back to Paul and he will let the customer know it is ready for transport to one of their retail sites.
We also have several vehicles that arrive with us for a small mechanical safety check and these are imaged and uploaded by us to the customers’ online Vehicle Trade Auction. In addition to our core responsibilities, we also take on repairs from other departments and external Defleet centres.
Notable Achievements
The volume of vehicles we can refurbish within the limited resources and space at our disposal is impressive.
Challenges and Solutions
The challenges that our department face is mostly lack of space and that we are spread out over three different buildings.
This puts a little strain on communication and limits us on the amount of work we can bring in at any given time. The future solution for this would be to have us all on a larger site, with all of us under the same roof and large enough vehicle parking spaces to build the department back up to, and potentially exceed, what it was pre-COVID.
Why It Matters
The work that we do gives our customers a more diverse service. Being the middlemen between our customer and their customers, through the trade auction, builds on the reputation of the company’s customer care and leads to other sales opportunities within the brand.
