Hydraulic hose specialist Hydraquip is to add a further 20 Mercedes-Benz Sprinter vans to its fleet by the end of the year.

The company was founded in Crawley, West Sussex, and now has a network of 25 depots stretching from Aberdeen to Exeter. It runs 160 vehicles, 105 of them Mercedes-Benz Sprinters kitted out as mobile workshops.

The medium-length vans are assigned to service engineers who provide a 24-hour, national call-out service, undertaking on-site repairs to hydraulic hoses on excavators, construction and rail vehicles, fork-lift trucks, and a wide range of other equipment.

A combination of Sprinter 313 CDIs and, more recently, Euro 6-engined 314 CDIs, those commissioned by Hydraquip over the last three years have been supplied by Sussex and Surrey Dealer Rossetts Commercials.

All are fitted with storage systems for spare parts, tools and equipment, by racking specialist Bott, of Ashby de la Zouch, Leicestershire.

Duncan MacBain, managing director of Hydraquip, said: “We’ve been buying Sprinters since around 2000 and they have always proved superbly reliable.

“We inherited some vehicles by another manufacturer a few years ago, as a result of a business acquisition, but they weren’t in the same league.

“They were off the road much more frequently and the back-up did not compare."

Founded by MacBain in 1989, Hydraquip started out with a staff of three but now employs more than 300 people who work from 25 locations nationwide. The company is still actively expanding – its target is to have 200 service vans on the road by 2020.