COMMERCIAL vehicles sales group Northside Truck and Van, which has a dealership in Bradford, won three awards at the national Mercedes-Benz truck awards, including being named truck dealer of the year.

The company, which is expanding its network, also won the Mercedes-Benz financial services truck team trophy, while truck sales director Ben Sowersby was named truck sales manager of the year.

Northside was also a finalist in the truck sales team and customer service dealer categories. Truck sales executive, Tony Birtwistle, was also a runner-up in the truck sales masters member of the year class and one of only four sales executives nationally to win a Diamond Club award in recognition for his tally of rigid vehicle registrations.

Leigh Margel, Northside’s van sales director also won the new title of van sales leader of the year at the Mercedes-Benz van academy awards.

Tim Ward, dealer principal, said the awards cemented a year of significant growth for the firm in 2014.

“It was certainly a great year, thanks to another magnificent effort by the company team. We’ve made fantastic progress across all parts of our business and it’s gratifying that our achievements have been recognised by the manufacturer.”

Northside registered nearly 1,000 more new vans in 2014 than the previous year and gained accreditation as one of the country’s first Mercedes-Benz Van ProCenters, an international customer care programme .

Northside invested £1.5million in the business last year and will pump another £2million into its seven-strong branch network in 2015.

Tim Ward added: “We firmly believe that if you invest in your infrastructure and in training, then your staff will be more motivated and engaged, with the result that they also become more productive and, crucially, customer satisfaction improves.”

More than half of Northside’s 440 employees have been through its ‘Ten steps to good customer service’ programme. This stipulates that incoming telephone calls must be answered within ten seconds, that vehicles will be ready for collection within ten minutes of the agreed time and that unscheduled repairs must be started within ten hours.

“This isn’t just a cosmetic exercise,we have systems in place to ensure these things actually happen,” said Tim.

Northside has branches in Bradford, Doncaster, Hull, Immingham, Leeds, Sheffield and York.

New figures show that UK commercial vehicle market registrations have grown for the third consecutive month.

According to the National Franchised Dealers Association, which represents commercial vehicle and franchised car retailers across the UK, van registrations rise by 28.8 per cent with more than 34,000 van registrations in March while HGV sales rose by 45.7 per cent.