Manchester based RJH Group has opened a second rider training site at Kirby Road, Leigh, Lancs, after successfully recovering from the theft of its fleet of training bikes from its Langley Road, Salford site.
Thieves made off with a £12,000 haul of Kawasaki ER5 and ER6s and only one of the five stolen bikes has since been recovered,” said director Robert Howitt. “The recovered bike was used in an armed robbery and is now stuck in forensic limbo. Without bikes, we could not operate and as our insurance did not include provision for courtesy bikes while the claim was being processed, the impact could have been devastating,” added Howitt, whose first move was to phone his insurer, Carole Nash and business development manager Mark Rzedian who offered to loan him two Suzuki Bandits from their own courtesy fleet.
“Carole Nash couldn’t have done more for us. Without them, we really would have struggled. As it was, thanks to them, instead of losing days or weeks of business, we were disrupted for just 24 hours,” said Howitt.
The timing of the theft could not have been worse for RJH, which was focusing attention on well-advanced plans to complement its established Salford training school with an additional site based at Leigh Miners, Welfare Institute in Lancashire. But with disruption minimised, the company was able to proceed with its plans to open the new Leigh operation on 1 July.
Said Mark Rzedian: “Many of the staff at Carole Nash are grateful to RJH for having given them a real taste of biking and for guiding them through CBT. Several staff members, including myself, got bitten by the biking bug at one of their taster sessions and subsequently went on to take the full bike test.”