Reach What happens when something fails

Every fleet breaks down. Ours is expected to.

A vehicle will fail, a driver will fall ill, and one morning a bus will not start. Any operator who tells you otherwise is selling you the first three months of a contract. What actually separates one company from another is the hour afterwards — how fast a replacement is moving, and whether you found out from us or from forty people standing at a gate.

Ask about cover See the targets

Replacement from 30 minutes
We call you first
Missed run, not invoiced

This capability at a glance

What it is: Held capacity, so a failure is an inconvenience not an incident
Applies to: Contracts — staff duty, shifts, allocations, events
Cover held: A reserve in the city, a spare at the gate, coaches staged
Targets: 30 to 60 minutes in the core cities, stated per contract
If we miss: That run is not invoiced. Written into the agreement
Priced: As its own line, never implied and never hidden

Send your shift pattern and headcount — a costed proposal with cover terms comes back within one working day.

Request a proposal

The only number that matters

How long until a vehicle is moving again.

Response time depends almost entirely on where the failure happens, so we quote it by place rather than offering one comforting figure for everything. These are working targets, and they are written into contracts rather than described on a website.

30 minutes
A spare already at the site
Factory and industrial contracts where a vehicle is held at the gate as part of the agreement. The replacement is not travelling to you — it is already there, keyed and checked, and the shift moves on almost unbroken.
Fastest, because nothing has to arrive
45 minutes
Core cities, contracted routes
Makkah, Madinah, Jeddah and Riyadh, inside normal operating hours. A reserve vehicle and a rested driver are held in the city against the contracts running there, which is what the cover line on your invoice pays for.
60 minutes
Core cities, overnight and peak
The small hours, Friday middays, and the weeks of Ramadan and Hajj when every vehicle in the Kingdom is committed. Still covered, honestly slower, and the target moves in the contract rather than being quietly missed.
2 to 3 hours
Intercity roads and outlying areas
A failure on the Madinah highway, near Yanbu or out towards AlUla means re-tasking the nearest crew and driving to you. We will not pretend that is forty-five minutes. What we will do is tell you the real figure within ten minutes of knowing, so you can make your own decisions.
Honest figure, fast

Held capacity is not free, so we show you what it costs

A reserve vehicle is a vehicle not earning, and a rested standby driver is a driver being paid to wait. Operators who promise cover without pricing it are either not holding anything or taking it out of the run you booked. On our contracts the cover sits on its own line, you can see the figure, and you can decide to take less of it.

What actually happens when a vehicle fails

The first hour, step by step.

Most operators have a replacement policy. Far fewer have a procedure for the twenty minutes before the replacement is even requested — which is where contracts are actually lost.

The driver reports it immediately
Not at the end of the run, not once he has tried to fix it himself. Drivers are instructed to call the desk the moment a vehicle is doubtful, and they are never penalised for calling early about something that turns out to be nothing.
Minute zero
We call you before you call us
Within ten minutes you get a call or a message saying what has happened, what we are doing and the honest time for the replacement. Finding out from your own staff standing at a gate is the failure; the breakdown is just a breakdown.
Within 10 minutes
The replacement is released
From the site spare, the city reserve or the nearest crew we can re-task, in that order. Capacity equal to or greater than the vehicle that failed — never a smaller one with an apology attached.
The target time
Passengers are looked after meanwhile
In heat, that means getting people out of the sun rather than leaving them beside a vehicle. On a contract run it means the coordinator staying on the phone with your supervisor until the replacement is visible from the gate.
Throughout
The failed vehicle is recovered
Ours to deal with, not yours, and not left on your forecourt or at a roadside for someone else to worry about. It goes to the workshop and does not return to a contract run until it has been signed off.
Same day
The month is reconciled honestly
Missed runs are credited on the invoice without you having to ask, and a short written note says what failed and what changed. Three incidents on one vehicle and it leaves the contract — that is the point of writing them down.
Month end

Cover by contract type

What is held, and what happens if we miss.

Different work needs different cover, and paying for a site spare you do not need is as wasteful as having none at all. These are the arrangements we actually write; yours is agreed before the contract starts and printed in it.

Standby arrangements by contract type
Contract	What is held	Replacement target	If we miss it
Factory shift transport Fastest	A spare vehicle at the site or the gate	30 min	That run is not invoiced
Monthly staff duty, core cities	A reserve vehicle and rested driver in the city	45 min	That run is not invoiced
Staff duty, overnight or peak season	The same reserve, under heavier demand	60 min	That run is not invoiced
Tour operator allocation, in season	Reserve coaches staged near the movements	60 min	That movement is not invoiced
Event or delegation day	A standby vehicle and driver on site all day	On site	Day rate credited
Intercity and outlying areas	Nearest crew re-tasked to you	2–3 h	Pro-rata credit on the journey
One-off private booking	Nearest available vehicle	Best effort	Fare refunded if we cannot cover

Note the last row. Service levels belong to contracts, because a contract is what lets us hold a vehicle back for you. A single booking gets our best effort and your money back if we fail — which is honest, but it is not an SLA, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise.

Credits are applied, not claimed

If we miss a target, the credit appears on your next invoice whether or not anyone from your side noticed. You should not have to audit your transport provider to be charged correctly, and a company that only credits the failures you catch is telling you something about the ones you do not.

The boundary, stated plainly

What cover reaches, and what no operator can promise.

An SLA that pretends to cover everything is worth nothing, because the first genuine exception teaches you it was never real. Here is exactly where ours stops.

What cover includes

Mechanical failure or breakdown of any vehicle on your contract
Driver illness, absence or a no-show, covered from the driver pool
A vehicle held for inspection, permit renewal or workshop time
An accident, including getting your people away from the scene
A short-notice extra shift or an unplanned rise in headcount
Seasonal surge capacity agreed in advance for Ramadan and Hajj
Recovery of our failed vehicle, so it is never your problem to move
A written note of what failed, and credits applied without being asked

Replacement capacity is equal to or greater than the vehicle that failed — never smaller with an apology attached.

What no operator can promise

A road closure, security cordon or authority instruction — nobody drives through those
Flooding, sandstorms or weather that closes a route to everyone
An identical vehicle model — we guarantee capacity, not a badge
Roadside recovery of vehicles you own — we are not a recovery company
Cover for journeys another operator arranged and then dropped mid-run
Contract targets on a one-off booking, where nothing is held in reserve
Unlimited surge in the Hajj weeks, when the whole Kingdom is committed

Where a route closes for reasons outside anyone's control, no credit is due and none is claimed — but you will still get the call, the honest timing and whatever we can re-plan.

The shapes cover takes

Held capacity, arranged to fit the work.

Cover is not one product. It is a decision about what to hold, where, and for how long — and the right answer for a three-shift factory is the wrong answer for a conference.

A spare at the gate Factory contracts A vehicle and driver stationed at your site through the shift window. The fastest cover there is, because nothing has to travel.
A city reserve Staff duty Vehicles held against all the contracts in a city rather than for one client, which is what makes it affordable.
Staged coaches Seasonal allocations Reserve coaches parked near the movements through Ramadan and the Hajj weeks, when a failure cannot wait.
Event-day standby On site, all day A vehicle and driver doing nothing but waiting for the day. Expensive, and worth it when a delegation is involved.
Driver pool cover Illness and leave Rested relief drivers rostered against sickness and annual leave, so the vehicle is never the thing that was available and the driver the thing that was not.
Surge capacity Agreed in advance Extra vehicles committed for a known peak — a plant shutdown, an inspection week, a season. Booked ahead, not hoped for.
Short-notice shifts Same day An unplanned extra run or a headcount that jumped. Quoted at the contract rate rather than an opportunistic one.
Second-operator cover Parallel running Some clients keep us alongside an incumbent during a transition. We are content being the reserve while you decide.
Cover only No base contract Occasionally a company runs its own fleet and wants only the failures covered. Unusual, but we will quote it.

The contracts this cover sits behind are Monthly Staff Duty, Factory Shift Transport, Tour Operator Allocations and Event & Delegation Transport.

Why we write this down

Contracts are not won on the good days.

Any operator can run a route in month two. The test comes the morning a bus does not start with a hundred and twenty people expecting it, and what you find out that morning is whether the cover you were promised at the tender actually existed. We would rather you knew the real numbers now, in public, than discovered them then.

You hear it from us first
Within ten minutes, with an honest time attached. The thing that damages a client relationship is not the breakdown — it is a supervisor ringing you from a gate to ask where the bus is while your provider says nothing.
The cover is a line, not a promise
You can see what it costs and decide to buy less of it. Cover folded invisibly into a rate is cover that can quietly disappear when margins tighten, and neither of us would know until it mattered.
Credits are applied without a claim
A missed target credits your next invoice whether or not anyone spotted it. You should not have to audit a supplier to be billed correctly, and we would rather lose the revenue than the argument.
Relief drivers are rostered, not improvised
A spare vehicle with nobody rested to drive it is not cover. The driver pool is staffed against known sickness and leave rates, which is the unglamorous half of this that most operators skip.
A vehicle that fails twice leaves the contract
Incidents are logged per vehicle, not just per month. Three on the same bus and it comes off your work permanently rather than being patched and sent back out to fail on a Tuesday.
We publish the exceptions too
Road closures, sandstorms, Hajj-week limits. An SLA with no stated exceptions is one nobody intends to honour, and you will find its real edges at the worst possible moment.

Cover questions

Asked by every procurement team, eventually.

Usually at the second meeting, and occasionally after something has already gone wrong with somebody else.

What is standby and replacement cover?

Capacity held back so a failure on your contract is an inconvenience rather than an incident — a spare vehicle at your gate, a reserve in the city, or coaches staged near a seasonal movement, together with rested relief drivers to put in them. It is what turns a breakdown into a forty-five minute delay instead of a lost shift.

How quickly does a replacement arrive?

Thirty minutes where a spare is held at your site, forty-five in the core cities during normal hours, sixty overnight or at seasonal peak, and two to three hours on intercity roads or in outlying areas. Those are contract targets, not marketing figures, and yours is printed in your agreement.

What happens if you miss the target?

Four escalating steps. A single missed run is not invoiced. A month below target adds a 5% credit on that month. Two consecutive months take it to 10% plus a written recovery plan and a director on the account. Three consecutive months give you the right to terminate immediately, without notice or penalty.

Does this apply to a one-off booking?

No, and we would rather say so plainly. Service levels exist because a contract lets us hold a vehicle back for you. A single booking gets our best effort and a full refund if we cannot cover it — honest, but not an SLA.

Will the replacement be the same vehicle?

The same capacity or greater, not necessarily the same model. If a Coaster fails you will get a Coaster or something larger, never a smaller vehicle with an apology and two people left behind.

What is not covered?

Road closures, security cordons, authority instructions and weather that shuts a route to everybody. Nobody drives through those, so no credit is due and we do not claim one — but you still get the call, the honest timing and whatever we can re-plan around it.

Who tells us when something has failed?

We do, within ten minutes, with a real time attached. Drivers report a doubtful vehicle immediately and are never penalised for calling early about nothing. Hearing it first from your own staff at a gate is the actual failure.

How is cover priced?

As its own line on the contract, so you can see the figure and buy less of it if you want. A held vehicle is a vehicle not earning and a standby driver is being paid to wait — an operator who promises cover without pricing it is either holding nothing or taking it out of the service you booked.

Can you cover for our existing operator?

We can run in parallel on part of the work while an incumbent finishes their term, and several clients start that way. What we will not do is pick up individual runs another operator has abandoned mid-shift, because we cannot promise a standard on work we did not plan.

Do you report on performance?

Yes, monthly: runs completed, incidents by vehicle, replacement times against target and credits applied. Vehicles are tracked individually, and three incidents on one of them takes it off your contract for good.