Dick Chapman

Area Asset Manager

Name: Dick Chapman

Role: Area asset manager

Location: Cleveland

You have to have your finger on the pulse, you have to know what’s coming in and what’s going out because the back end is where the asset team gets very very involved in selling the vehicles at the back end, making sure we get the maximum price for every vehicle.

What is asset management? Asset management is all about fleet bouncing, managing the stock and making sure the right vehicles are in the right place at the right time. It’s all through the life cycle of a vehicle. We arrange with purchasing to find out what vehicles we need, where we need them and ordering them for the sales team to get vehicles on hire and then organising the receipt onto the main stock.

What do you have to do? Asset management is a very autonomous role and you control your own diary. I have an asset coordinator and he’s based in Scotland and I’m in the North East. We also have admin administrators to help us. We have to be mobile, if you’re not mobile you can’t complete the role. You have to have your finger on the pulse, you have to know what’s coming in and what’s going out because the back end is where the asset team gets very very involved in selling the vehicles at the back end, making sure we get the maximum price for every vehicle.

What’s the working environment like? I like the autonomy, I get out and I meet people from nine different branches and each branch is quite unique, different problems, different issues. It’s a developing company and it’s evolving.