I f you won't see 40 again, you've spent all your
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adult life in the armed forces, and your days in uniform are numbered, how can you best adapt to civvy street? How are you going to earn a living, given high levels of joblessness and the prejudice so many employers have against the middle aged?
One answer is to make full use of your service experience and start planning ahead two or three years before you're due to go. You also take advantage of of any preparatory courses. That's what Alex Belokon did, and his painstaking preparation has paid off handsomely. Trading as Abel Transport, and based near Ho'beach, Lincs, he's now an owner-driver on Continental work for Archbolds.
In 1967 Belokon joined the Royal Corps of Transport's Junior Leaders Regiment at the age of 16. "I spent 24 years and 74 days in the army and I was a staff sergeant when I came out," he says. "I had a good career—within six years of enlisting I was running a section of 18-tonne amphibious vehicles."
A few years later he was involved with training military drivers. "Night driving crosscountry without lights laden and unladen was all part of it," he explains. "My last posting involved ADR training at Colchester and running the maintenance workshop for some 200 prime movers and ancillary vehicles."
Gravitated
With all that under his belt it's not surprising that he gravitated towards haulage when he left the army in 199L "While I was still serving I did a CPC and a transport management course," he says.
But although he was determined to work for himself—his military background had left him self-confident and self-reliant—he was well aware that he needed some civilian transport experience before he took the plunge.
Belokon got a job driving for TDS (New Holland) of Spalding, ending up as an assistant manager and relief driver. His driving involved international work—flowers to Switzerland, hazardous loads to Germany— and when he wasn't driving or hard at work in TDS's offices he was beavering away on another, vital project.
The army had taught him to prepare thoroughly for any major task, so he drew up a detailed business plan for what would become Abel Transport. The result was a comprehensive, credible document that he could show to banks and finance companies. He'd also gained knowledge of, and contacts in, international transport so he could obtain work when he left TDS. While preparing his plan Belokon made full use of facilities provided by the Business Centre in Boston, run jointly by further education colleges in the area.
"The centre offers all sorts of assistance and advice, and is invaluable because of the contacts you make," he enthuses. He also scouted around for local government, national government and European Union funding for small business start-ups. The cupboard was pretty bare, but his diligence paid off with a tax-free £1,000 grant from Lincolnshire Enterprise.
He still needed a truck, and he was determined to go for a new one as soon as he could. "1 wanted reliability, back-up, and I was also conscious of the image I wanted to project to potential customers," he says. A key consideration was price, and he's currently running an Iveco EuroStar. He did the deal with Canterbury-based Invicta after approaching one or two other dealers.
"As it turned out, the salesman was an exarmy guy, which was handy," he says. Invicta was impressed with his business plan, so was finance company Lombard, and between them they hammered out a three-year finance lease backed by a mainte nance agreement. "That's reduced my projected servicing bill over the period by around £9,000," says Belokon.
He had also impressed senior management at trailer spe cialist Stocks of Thurrock in Essex. They constructed a 13.6m triaxle curtainsider trailer suitable for European work using a Dennison chassis and finance courtesy of Close Asset Finance.
Belokon found it surprisingly easy to open an account with a fuel card company. Only one required a substantial deposit—a whopping £5,000—so he quickly looked elsewhere and now carries a Fina Eurotrafic card.
Raring to go, Belokon left TDS in 1995 and started hauling on behalf of a company in central Europe. Everything seemed fine until they didn't pay him. When the debt reached £3,000 he consulted a solicitor, only to be told that suing through the courts of a foreign country would cost him roughly £12,000, with no guarantee of success.
"In this business you become streetwise quickly and you soon know who is trying to stitch you up," he says. "You also know that there's always somebody who will do it cheaper." He's appalled by the rate cutting. "Let's all remember why we are in transport, it's to make money not to subsidise industry or let others profit at our expense." Working for Archbolds on French and Italian groupage and full loads is proving a much better bet than his previous entanglement, and he's also grateful to Phoenix Cargo in Wisbech: "I was stuck in central Europe without a backload they loaded me back to the UK, and paid me in seven days."
The 420hp 6x2 mid-lift EuroStar is performing well with no serious reliability problems. "On my first two European trips it didn't go below 8.2mpg, and on my most recent one I achieved 93mpg," says Belokon. "Mind you, I was bringing hamster cages back from Venice and the load only weighed three tonnes!"
Complete with a TV, fridge and video recorder, his cab is a real home-from-home. The centre lift restricts him to a 400 litre tank but he's considering having a catwalk tank fitted. The trailer has an unladen weight of 7.1 tonnes, which means a maximum payload of 22.5 tonnes at 38 tonnes.
So why is his truck called 'The Bolton Wanderer'? "Because I come from Bolton originally and I'm a Bolton Wanderers supporter," he grins. Belokon isn't exactly a common Lancashire name: "IvIy dad came from Kiev and ended up in Britain as a displaced person at the end of the war," he explains.
Encounter
A chance encounter with a Continental driver resulted in the discovery that there's a transport company called Belokon based in his father's home city.
He believes there's a good chance that some long-lost relatives could he involved in it, and has attempted to contact them; so far without much success. Over the years he has picked up some basic Russian, along with some German and Dutch.
If he does link up with them it could end up benefiting both parties; because Alex Belokon is an ambitious man. "I want to put a second truck on the road in 18 months to two years' time," he says. "I update my business plan at three-monthly intervals and I'm now getting two or three calls a day offering work."
Belokon believes a level European playing field is essential for the survival of British international hauliers, and as UK drivers have to pay tolls on the Continent, that ought to mean charging European hauliers for the use of UK roads. "Make them pay when they get off the boat," he says. "It's that simple. As things stand UK hauliers are being placed at a disadvantage and the Continentals are laughing at us. And we get no assistance from Westminster." CI by Steve Banner