Whippet, the 105-year-old Cambridgeshire bus company has embarked on an ambitious business expansion programme. Backed by parent company Ascendal, the international passenger transport group, Whippet has transformed its fleet management with software from Freeway Fleet Systems.
“At Ascendal, we have the vision of bringing cities to life through the delivery of best-in-class public transport,” says Jonathan Ziebart, Managing Director, Ascendal UK. “Post-COVID, we have pioneered a number of industry firsts, including deploying Hong Kong’s first hydrogen bus. From a UK perspective, we are incredibly proud of our partnerships we have in place, and are enjoying working with our long-term partners, including Freeway in deploying their latest solutions.”
Jonathan Ziebart, Managing Director, Ascendal UK
Formed in 1919, Whippet is one of the UK’s oldest bus companies, and runs local bus services connecting the region’s towns and villages, which include guided buses for routes along the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway, the longest busway in the world.
The company also operates coaches for FlixBus, taking passengers as far as Paris and Amsterdam and, in association with Cambridge University, Whippet runs the city-wide Universal service used by 18,000 passengers per week. In 2023 Whippet took delivery of 9 Mellor Sigma 12 battery-electric single-deckers in what was the largest privately-funded purchase of electric buses in the UK.
Whippet first implemented Freeway’s software back in 2014 when the company was part of Tower Transit. In fact, Whippet was a pioneer in the adoption of new technology, having introduced tablets running Freeway’s mobile WebApps software back in 2015. And today, Whippet is the first operator to use a new cloud-based version of Freeway for driver walkaround checks.
Freeway is used to manage maintenance of Whippet’s fleet that comprises a mix of double-deckers, saloons, coaches and fleet cars. Prior to switching to a fully digital system, Whippet relied on paper and spreadsheets to manage their fleet maintenance.
Freeway is used across engineering providing digital job cards and inspection sheets, re-torquing, compliance management, and the system manages parts for auto-replenishment of stocks. Whippet has introduced dashboards that give an immediate view of all daily activity on a large screen.
Scot Nicholetti, Engineering Manager, Whippet
“Introducing Freeway was completely transformational,” says Scot Nicholetti, Engineering Manager at Whippet. “Previously we had very little visibility of what was going on in the workshop, but with engineers using tablets we now have live and detailed insight into everything going on. Engineers also take photographs whilst on the job and that’s particularly useful as a record of defects and work done.”
Probably the biggest benefit of Freeway is that it gives us a proper insight into our costs; something we just didn’t have before. We can then undertake cost analytics to minimise wastage, streamline stocks and with visibility of maintenance histories we can identify recurring defects, manage warranties and use parts more efficiently.”
