SomersTotalKare

SomersTotalKare is a supplier and maintainer of heavy duty mobile commercial vehicle lifts. The company is currently the UK’s largest supplier of heavy duty mobile vehicle lifts providing lifts for over 6,000 businesses. In 2010, SomersTotalKare moved to new purpose built premises, on the same complex as the firm’s transport company, Adam Jones and Sons; however, its operations are still based in Halesowen where the business was founded in 1953 under the name Walter Somers Material Handling.
History
The origins of SomersTotalKare date back to 1953 with the incorporation of Walter Somers Material Handling. The firm’s name referred to the Derbyshire engineer and businessman, Walter Somers, who formed Walter Somers Limited in the 19th century, a forge business that supplied steel items for military use by the British Admiralty in World War I as well as sections of the anchors used on the RMS Titanic.
After initially importing its products from Germany, Water Somers Material Handling established a manufacturing and assembly centre at its base in Halesowen, West Midlands. It was here that the RG (Redesigned German) mobile vehicle lift was born.
In 1987 Walter Somers Material Handling was sold to the then Managing Director, Robert Perkins, who renamed the business Somers Handling. At the time, the company continued activities in railway locomotive lifting, mobile vehicle lifting and heavy handling for steel plants before a demerger in 1997 that split the company into its three subsidiaries, one of which being Somers Vehicle Lifts.
Acquisitions
Two years after the standalone establishment of Somers Vehicle Lifts, the mobile lift business was acquired by the Triapt Holdings group. The acquisition was partnered with the takeovers of local competitor ProLift, of Hereford, and Sefac of France and made Triapt the world’s largest supplier and manufacturer of mobile vehicle lifts with production in France and England and sales extending further afield into Spain and the United States.
In 2001, the UK division of Triapt, Somers Vehicle Lifts, rebranded its aftersales department as sister company TotalKare in a push to further improve the quality of its maintenance and repair service. However, while the UK service element thrived, the production and assembly of lifts in Halesowen was ceased in 2002 with all manufacturing moving to France (now Germany). Despite this outsourcing of production, engineering continues today at the firm’s Black Country headquarters with major repairs and refurbishment operations.
Demerger
In 2004, Somers Vehicle Lifts experienced another change with the demerger of Triapt Holdings following a management buyout of Somers Vehicle Lifts. The group purchased Somers Vehicle Lifts and TotalKare and unified the former UK sectors of Triapt into SomersTotalKare, the name under which the business operates today.
Headed by buyout team Tim Jackson, James Radford and Michael Gilliam, SomersTotalKare returned to concentrating on its core activities of supplying and servicing mobile vehicle lifts across the UK.
In 2010, the most recent piece of the SomersTotalKare jigsaw was implemented with the company’s move to new purpose-built premises, on the same site as the firm’s transport company, Adam Jones & Sons. While operations only shifted a quarter of a mile across Halesowen, the move reflected significant progress for SomersTotalKare in the efficiency of their operations.
The Mobile Vehicle Lift
Just as the SomersTotalKare business has evolved over the years, so have the products and services that the company delivers. Today, SomersTotalKare supplies mobile vehicle lifts, scissor lifts and a range of ancillary equipment.
SomersTotalKare’s primary product is mobile vehicle lifts which have incoroprated many new innovations over the company’s lifespan, as figure 1 shows. The first Somers lifts came back in the days of Walter Somers Handling when a transition to UK manufacturing spurred the conception of the RG (Redesigned German) Lift and this column lift concept has since evolved right through to the current S6 range that is manufactured for SomersTotalKare today and is fully compliant with Health & Safety requirements, regulated by BS EN 1493-1999.
TotalKare
In addition to equipment supplied, SomersTotalKare also undertake major repair and refurbishment operations at the firm's Halesowen base. The extensive aftersales aspect of the business, which has thrived since the conception of the TotalKare business in 2001, is further supplemented by a team of field engineers who execute nationwide maintenance servicing and LOLER (Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998) thorough examinations.
Note
(Largest supplier according to Garage Equipment Association Statistics 2007)

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