Nicholls Transport

When constructing its new purpose-built site a decade ago, the roofs of the buildings were built with photovoltaic cells installed on them and today produce around 80% of the electricity used to run the site.

The company also installed a system to harvest the rainwater which falls on the site to run its truck wash and planted over 5,000 shrubs and trees around the site.

Managing Director Paul Nicholls and his son Alex Nicholls, Operations Director, wanted to go further and invest in sustainable transport and when IVECO imported the first 6x2 capable of carrying a full 44-tonne load, they were the first to trial the vehicle.

But it was a chicken and egg scenario - buy trucks and hope that an LNG refuelling station comes along or wait for a refuelling station and then buy trucks.

By working with Gasrec, Nicholls did both and purchased its first LNG trucks in 2019 and installed the only LNG refuelling station in the Southeast on its site in Sittingbourne.

Today the fleet of LNG trucks has increased to 41 and have achieved 191% savings on GHG emissions compared to Diesel trucks.