The Actipole Plus fleet has 38 vehicles distributed among four companies based in the east of the Paris region. Namely Parc Auto in Limeil-Brévannes (94) and Montgeron (91), SEE Dépanauto (SEED, 94), and P2A in Pontault-Combault (77). Actipole Plus carries out more than 18,000 interventions per year. The prefect mandated him for Val-de-Marne (94) and the roads of Seine-et-Marne (77), as did the mayors of Essonne (91), in the context of public contracts. Actipole Plus removes more than 300,000 damaged or repaired vehicles each year from the A86 motorway. But also the N19 and N406 roads and the roads of departments 91, 94 and 77. The company also provides assistance and breakdown assistance within twenty minutes for insurers.
3,700 vehicles stored in 2021
The vehicles that Actipole Plus collects range from electric scooters to caravans. Passing through light vehicles, light and heavy utilities, heavy goods vehicles. But also cars and buses, wrecks to be destroyed and abandoned vehicles. Actipole Plus stores these vehicles in its parks. It then receives their owners who pay their fine, the intervention of the pound on the road, its custody costs and any additional fuel or battery recharging to recover them. In 2021, the company stored 3,700 vehicles at the request of the police to make them available to investigators. Finally, Actipole Plus has two end-of-life vehicle (ELV) centers. These are France Europe Automobile (FEA, 77) and Autodico (60). These centers destroy irreparable vehicles and recycle them. Actipole Plus thus achieved a turnover of 8 million euros in 2020.
35 specialized vehicles
For its missions, Actipole Plus deploys 35 vehicles, including 24 three- or four-car Renault Trucks Midlum and Maxity, or Mercedes-Benz Econic trucks. In addition, during the acquisitions of companies, a Volvo Trucks tractor with an eight-car carrier semi-trailer, a DAF dump truck, four Isuzu or Toyota 4×4 tow trucks, a semi-trailer worth million euros and an Eastract remote-controlled tankette that extracts cars from underground parking lots. All these vehicles are chosen for their reliability. “Our vehicles turn a lot and over short distances. This affects the engines which suffer when they rev up for traction, reports Jean-Yves Chevallier, general manager of Actipole Plus. Our integrated garage in Montgeron carries out 90% of maintenance and repairs to reduce our costs. We only keep our trucks for six to six years. »
Internal driver training
Actipole Plus itself trains its 24 drivers and mechanics in the repair and removal trades. “There is no school for our job, which is a niche and requires real versatility,” explains Jean-Yves Chevallier. We therefore hire former drivers or mechanics who have the heavy goods vehicle license and the Caces and who are looking for a more sedentary life. And we train them in our trade. In each park, the company also pays two forklift operators to load and unload the vehicles from the trucks with Still forklifts. These forklift operators then store them in the fleet by brand name and age. Housed on site, they are also night guards and take care of guard dogs.
SI Fourrière and recycling software
Since April 2021, Actipole Plus has been using the SI Fourrière software. A software created by the authorities to manage stored vehicles. “Usable on a Tablet PC, this tool streamlines our services and speeds up the return of the vehicle or its destruction by informing individuals of the procedure to follow, explains Jean-Yves Chevallier. It also improves our protection against abusive litigation. It also allows us to free up space by destroying wrecked vehicles earlier. And soon, he will digitize the return slip. »
The Actipole Plus group also sees it as a tool to diversify its activities. “With our ELV centers which dismantle five to six vehicles a day, we can develop our recycling activities by reselling guaranteed spare parts on the circular economy market, but also oils, brake fluids and AdBlue for resale or depollution”, enthuses the managing director.
Securing electric vehicles
Finally, Jean-Yves Chevallier wants to modernize the pound by replacing diesel in trucks and tow trucks with organic or synthetic fuels, in order to access the ZFE-m. “I don’t believe in electromobility for our profession,” he says. But if they become Crit’Air1, synthetic biofuels seem ideal to me before switching to hydrogen. But the urgency lies in managing the storage of electric vehicles.
“Electric vehicles pose a high risk of battery fires,” he says. We must separate them by at least 2 m and equip ourselves with a water retention basin to immerse those who catch fire in it for three days so that the fire does not spread to other electric vehicles. We also try to obtain the agreement of the authorities to store their batteries in a fireproof container to reduce the risk. Actipole Plus has also set up an electric pole to recharge vehicle batteries.
