Last summer, Schmitz Cargobull’s first service van hit the road, marking the launch of its mobile customer services. Hatip Olcay is in charge of the service fleet’s first vehicle. From maintenance to emergency repairs, with his service van, trailer and cooling unit expert Olcay brings the workshop directly to the customer. We spent some time shadowing him during his callouts.
Olcay’s working day starts at the Schmitz Cargobull headquarters in Altenberge. His first stroll of the morning always takes him to the trailer manufacturer’s central warehouse. “My colleagues in the warehouse hand over all the spare parts and maintenance equipment that I ordered on my mobile phone the night before,” says Olcay. This morning he’s collecting two air filters and a few more small spare parts. “I always fill my van straight back up with the things that I used up during the day’s callouts,” says Olcay.
A trained commercial vehicle mechatronics engineer, Olcay has been running the first Schmitz Cargobull service van since June 2025. Over the next few years, Europe’s leading trailer manufacturer is aiming to launch its service vans across the entire continent.
As the pioneer of the mobile service network, Olcay’s van has been equipped just the way he wants and needs it. On the driver’s side, he stores spare parts, gas canisters, and consumables. A workbench and tools are located next to the sliding door on the passenger side. “Just the way I want it,” says Olcay.
An entire trailer load of frozen food is at risk of perishing
Olcay’s first trip of the day takes him to Münster, where he is heading to a catering wholesaler in a commercial district in the south of the city. The customer had called Olcay the night before with an emergency. Two Schmitz Cargobull refrigerated trailers serve as stationary cold storage units located on the company’s premises. The cooling system in one of the trailers has stopped working properly and is no longer reaching the target temperature of -26°C. An entire trailer load is at risk of perishing: frozen pizzas, salmon fillets, and other frozen goods.
While Olcay is on his way to his emergency call-out, his phone rings. Regular customer Fleeptloop needs his help. They are also experiencing problems with a cooling unit. It won’t start. Olcay agrees to take on the case as soon as he is finished with the emergency appointment in Münster. The customer sounds relieved and hangs up. But, just a few minutes later, the same customer calls again. They want to make the most of the opportunity and ask Olcay if he would have enough time to take a look at four cooling units instead of just one. “Of course. No problem,” he says. Agreeing to the job, service expert Olcay demonstrates what great customer service really looks like.
Always available
Customers don’t always call Olcay directly. “Lots of them call Cargobull Euroservice first,” he says. That is Schmitz Cargobull’s central customer hotline for customers across Europe. “If they receive a customer request from inside my call-out radius and it is a problem that can be resolved with mobile service, then my Cargobull Euroservice colleagues pass the customer on to me,” explains Olcay. He adds that working with the Schmitz Cargobull service department is great and it runs very smoothly.
“If they receive a customer request from inside my call-out radius and it is a problem that can be resolved with mobile service, then my Cargobull Euroservice colleagues pass the customer on to me.“
Hatip Olcay, commercial vehicle mechatronics engineer and the man in charge of Schmitz Cargobull’s first service van.
When the service van turns into the catering wholesaler’s premises, Olcay meets the boss, who is visibly stressed. He is worried about his precious goods. Olcay heads purposefully towards the cooling unit, activates the display and immediately spots that the temperature difference between the return air and discharge air is too low. What’s more, the entire trailer interior is covered in ice. Olcay’s diagnosis? “Broken fan.” The customer doesn’t comment. The only thing that matters to him is that the problem is solved as quickly as possible. Olcay nods: “We’ll sort it out.“
If Hatip Olcay and his mobile service van didn’t exist, the wholesaler would have to try to get a workshop appointment straight away, organise a tractor unit and driver, and hire additional cooling capacities so that his sensitive goods wouldn’t perish. As well as incurring enormous costs, the whole process would also take a few days.
A routine job thanks to many years of experience with a wide array of issues
To confirm his suspicions that a fan is defective, Olcay climbs up via the ladder that he transports on the roof of his service van. This is the only way he can access the fans, which run in parallel. He bypasses one fan after the other. He finds that it is the middle fan that is broken. Olcay takes the defective device out of the system – and the trailer cooling starts working again. The goods are salvaged, and the customer has been saved from a huge amount of damage.
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Franchise system for service van network
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| The Schmitz Cargobull service van network provides standardised services across Europe – to a reliably high standard. To make this possible, Schmitz Cargobull runs its fleet network according to a franchise concept, where independent partners run the service vans. These partners receive comprehensive support from Schmitz Cargobull when it comes to IT, logistics and spare parts supply. The company also works closely with its partners in relation to employee training, qualification, and marketing. |
No more than 45 minutes have passed between Olcay arriving at the customer and resolving the issue. “All my years of experience mean that I can quickly see where the problem must be,” says Olcay. He spent ten years working in a workshop for a Schmitz Cargobull partner. He then spent eight years working for the company’s technical customer service team, including time out in the field. He has even been to Turkey and the USA for his work for the trailer manufacturer. No sooner than the frozen food has been saved, Olcay is back on the road in his service van. He joins the A1 motorway, heading north. The service expert’s next stop is the premises of customer Fleetloop, whose service request came in little more than an hour ago. Olcay is tasked with getting one broken-down cooling unit back up and running, as well as straightening out three other units that aren’t performing at 100%.
A huge fleet of trailers but not a single tractor unit
Fleetloop hires out trailers. Its fleet includes more than 300 semi-trailers. All of them come from Schmitz Cargobull and many of them are equipped with cooling units – though not all of these are from Schmitz Cargobull. Not a problem: Olcay is licensed to service cooling units from a range of manufacturers.
Once he’s reached his destination, Olcay fishes out the key for the gate to access the customer’s premises. They obviously have a great deal of trust in the mobile service engineer. “Fleetloop is one of my best customers,” says Olcay, who receives multiple requests from this customer every month.
Trailer after trailer lines up on the company’s grounds. As a leasing company, Fleetloop does not actually have any roadworthy tractor units. “That means that any maintenance and every repair always used to involve a huge amount of effort and incur high costs,” says Berthold Zbrug, fleet manager at Fleetloop. Until now. “Thanks to Hatip Olcay and his service van, everything is much easier now – and much, much cheaper,” explains Zbrug.
In this case, the problem with one cooling unit’s new battery is quickly resolved, and the three other units are easily jump-started too.
Growing network of service vans
A short time later and Olcay is on his way to his next customer. Olcay and his service van travel between 300 and 500 kilometres every week. He mainly looks after customers within a 100-kilometre radius of Altenberge. Cheekily, he admits that: “I don’t apply the 100-kilometre rule so strictly when it comes to my long-standing customers.” Additional service experts are set to expand the mobile service network for other Schmitz Cargobull customers over the next few months and years..