After interacting with some of the leading transport operators across different locations in the country, MOTORINDIA could make a second visit to Rajasthan, particularly to cover a nondescript town known as Nimbahera, about 100 km from Udaipur, famous for the stone of the same name which is used as a building material and as raw material in cement manufacturing.
We caught up with Mr. Vikas Sharda, Proprietor-cum-Director of Prem Sharda Goods Company owning a mammoth fleet of 500-odd vehicles based at Prem Nagar. The company was floated by his father, Mr. Prem Prakash Sharda, as an authorized petroleum transporter of BPCL in 1985. Mr. Vikas Sharda joined the business in 2005 as a second generation entrepreneur, and under his stewardship, the company built its close association with JK Tyre.
Outlining how the company commenced operation and grew over the years, Mr. Vikas Sharda said: “The business was started from scratch in 1982 with a tie-up with Vikram Cement. However, its growth got a boost with the opening of fly ash tanker business at a later stage. We also got into fuel oil transportation business which boomed eventually. By 1990, our fleet size was of comprised of 50 vehicles. Today, the size has grown ten-fold and a major chunk of business is derived from fly ash and loose cement transport, at 75 per cent, with the majority of the fleet dedicated for the sector. Apart from that, we are doing LPG transportation in the 21-tonne segment for HPCL, IOCL, BPCL, etc., for the northern and western regions. We are the regular transporter for Ultratech and Lafarge. We are also busy transportating loose cement and fly ash in the Delhi NCR.”
Commenting on the company association with JK Tyre, he stated: “It dates back to 2001 when they supplied their first batch of tyres for 60-tonne load (capacity) to us for our Volvo (Trucks) fleet, and since then there has been no looking back. In fact, our entire fleet is fitted with radial tyres, and all of them are sporting JK. The usual distance covered is 80,000 km per year.”
Apart from the 40-odd Volvos which are 15 years old and have traversed over 35 lakh km, Prem Sharda Goods Company also has other brands like MAN, AMW, Tata Motors, Ashok Leyland, Mahindra & Mahindra, etc. However, almost 70 per cent of the fleet are Tata-branded vehicles. It also has Prima in its fleet. “We swear allegiance to Tata Motors because their service support is the best, downtime is much less, aggregates and parts cost are lower and their distribution network is huge,” stated Mr. Sharda.
Shedding some further light on the tyres used in the fleet, he observed: “Among other operational expenses, tyre is the only item whose cost can be controlled. At present, it accounts for 7% of the overall expenditure in business. We can inspect the tyres in terms of alignment, nitrogen filling, pressure and wheel balancing, and the JK Fleet Management team supports each and every customer in all such aspects.”
He further stated: “JK Tyre is hand-holding us by not only providing us the ideal products but also offering us the right solutions and technical consultancy for wheel alignment, nitrogen filling, tyre pressure based on our loading and driving patterns, the kind of terrains covered, etc. They also provide us robust tyres in terms of cooling effect.”
He minced no words when he remarked: “The awareness level of radials is quite less in Rajasthan, and JK Tyre can surely capitalize on this. They can take a cue from me because I believe in the JK Tyre technology and the kind of education they give to the (tyre) fitters to cut down the operational of cost per km. You can even reduce this 7 per cent (of the total costs) to even 5 per cent. For a fleet operator like us, even a 2 per cent cost reduction is huge. Their tyres are also very ideal for retread application, and our company tyre life has increased from 80,000 km by an additional 10 per cent, thanks to the JK wheel alignment and other solutions.”
