Behind the summer peak: the CLEAN teams keeping deliveries moving in August

August is one of the busiest months of the year for our customers, and equally demanding for the people who make sure service never misses a beat. While businesses focus on serving guests, diners and production schedules, our teams are working behind the scenes to keep linen and workwear moving exactly where they need to be.

Here's what that looks like from both sides of the operation: out on the road, making deliveries happen, and inside the laundry, keeping everything running smoothly.

The day starts before the customer's does

Most of our drivers are loading before 4:30 am. There is a practical reason for the hour. A hotel needs its clean linen in the housekeeping store before the morning changeover starts, and a restaurant wants its table linen in before the kitchen arrives for prep.

Sean Farrell has been doing it since 2015. He is a senior driver at our Camberley laundry, and his shift opens with a full vehicle check covering tyres, lights and load security before anything moves. A typical day for Sean might be a delivery to Heathrow, back to Camberley to reload, then a run of drops through central London.

A delivery is about far more than leaving a laundry cage full of clean linen at the door. Clean stock needs to be taken to the designated delivery point and used items collected. Our team of asset Managers regularly check stock levels to ensure they match customer expectations.

In August, local knowledge makes all the difference. The driver who knows which hotel's service lift is shared with the kitchen, where the linen store is located, and the best time to avoid a busy loading bay can complete the job quickly and efficiently without stopping to ask for directions.

It's knowledge built up over time, and during the busiest weeks of the year, it helps keep customers supplied without disrupting their day.

Route planning is a summer problem

Planning a route in February and planning one in August are different jobs. Coastal and tourist routes take longer, roadworks season is in full swing, and volumes are higher, which means fewer drops per load and more trips. Our planners rework rounds through the summer to suit, sequencing drops so nobody is fighting through a town centre at the worst hour. Live vehicle tracking sits behind it, so when a customer rings to ask where their delivery is, we can tell them.

Much of what makes a plan work comes back from the drivers. Sean and the Camberley team know which stops have shifted their delivery windows for the summer and which access routes are worth avoiding in August, and the plan follows their reports.

"The volume goes up in August, but the job doesn’t change. Check the vehicle, know your route, and get there when you said you would."  Sean Farrell

What happens when the vehicle comes back

The used linen and workwear coming back in is where the second half of the day processing starts. Workwear Items are barcoded, and linen items contain an RFID chip; both are scanned in on arrival, so we know what has returned, from where, and what is still out.

Sorting and washing follow. Across our laundries, each product has its own wash process, so hotel bed linen, chef whites, hi-vis and food production garments are never run together, and a food site's garments never share a process with general industrial workwear. Our laundry sites are set up for the products they handle.

Kasia Zbikowska is a Production Manager at our Slough laundry and has been with CLEAN for twelve years, including helping to open the site a decade ago. Her job is to turn the day's plan into what happens on the floor, and to change it when the day has other ideas.

"There is no typical day. Planning matters, but so does being ready with a plan B, C, or even D."

The thing Kasia says people outside the business are unaware of is that production never stops. Someone is on site 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. 

The quality check nobody sees

Every item is inspected after washing. Linen with a tear, a stain that has not lifted or a worn edge is withdrawn and replaced rather than folded and sent out. Workwear with a failed seam, a broken zip or a missing button goes to our repair team before going back to our packing stations.

Customers never see this part, but it is the part that decides what they think of our service. A housekeeper who rejects two sheets from a delivery has lost ten minutes and a bit of confidence in her supplier. Multiply that across an August week at full occupancy, and it stops being a small thing.

When the plan changes

August leaves the least room to absorb small problems. A vehicle off the road, a power interruption, or equipment breakdowns can all be challenging. Each of our laundries has backup for our important equipment. Two boilers, two air compressors, two batch washing machines, two banks of tumble driers and several ironing machines.  Our water is supplied via our own borehole, but we can switch to town mains at any time. Our IT systems are backed up and cloud-based. 

We also have agreements in place for the hire of an emergency electricity generator should we experience a total power outage.  We also have our own fleet of vehicles that can move laundry between sites if required. Unglamorous infrastructure that, for most years, is never needed, and it exists so that a bad day at our end does not become a bad week at a customer's.

The rest is people, and Kasia is direct about what carries a summer.

"Support from colleagues keeps me motivated, and we get through it together."

Holiday cover is planned across the season rather than arranged on a week-by-week basis, so the teams going into August already know who is covering what.

Why we are telling you this

If you are a customer or thinking about becoming one, you will see a delivery arrive on time with the right items. We have invested heavily in our resilience plans and it is a fair question to ask any supplier about resilience planning before choosing your supplier.

Read how this works for individual customers in our case studies, or meet more of the people behind the service on our Employee Spotlight pages. If you would rather just talk to someone, call 0330 818 7008.