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Looking for adventure
Page 28
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When the vertical playing field has hit your Continental trade, what do you do for
excitement? Dominic Perry meets the new
owners of Astravan, whose eyes are turning to the Middle East
Haulage, logistics or road transport — depending what part of the industry you work in —can be a way of life or ajob like any other. Some people live and breathe trucks and transport; for others it's simply a means of earning a living with all the romance of accountancy or rodding drains.
Hugh Thompson, boss of Maidstone-based John Seymour Transport, concedes that while there's an element ofjob satisfaction in what he does, it lacks a certain glamour. "Yes, you get a feeling of a job well done from delivering 15 tonnes of aggregate to B&Q," he says," but your overriding concern is how fast you can get the vehicle unloaded in order to do another load, and it's not exactly riveting is it?"
You feel that 30-odd years in the industry have taken the excitement out of the job for Thom pson,despite his obvious success. Starting out withjust a van —"and absolutely no business plan... not the best way to begin"— he's built the company into a multi-million pound affair, Seymour Transport is best known as an international haulier. although along with everyone else in Kent the firm has seen its Continental work shrivel up over the past 10 or so years as cut-price competition ate into its market share.
There is still some cross-Channel work, but the firm has diversified into the construction industry."That's where we have seen the largest growth in our business over the past few years," says Thompson. -We have effectively turned ourselves into niche market hauliers for the construction industry.
Kent heartland
Part of the growth came from the acquisition in 2000 of fellow Kent haulier Colin Wild Transport and with it a base in Barnsley, well away from its Kent heartland. So these days instead of Continental work it's products like pre-cast concrete lintels. bagged gravel, paper, cardboard for recycling and wire reinforcing mesh that keeps its trucks busy.
"We've gone from a groupage and part load operator 10 years ago to moving hundreds of thousands of tonnes of base product all over the place, very efficiently too I might add," says Thompson. "You have to change to stay alive and if we were still doing what we were doing 10 years hack then we'd be bankrupt now."
Despite the financial stability the new work has brought, it's clear that Thompson isn't entirely satisfied. Several times during our conversation he refers to the lack of excitement or challenge in the job which, he explains, is key to him:" In the back of my mind the odd frisson of excitement still pops up when an odd or different job appears. That's what got me started in the first place when people said to me 'I bet you can't do that"."
Chances are that Thompson has found the excitement he craves. Late last year came the opportunity to spice up the business with the purchase of Astran Cargo Services. For those with long memories Astran will he familiar as a pioneer of trucking to the Middle East.
It had a great reputation but was clearly a firm whose time had been and gone. Not that this put Thompson off:1 knew very little about it in a way, but I realised that it had massive potential because of the situation in the Middle East. It's a very fluid and volatile situation and whatever other words you want to attach to it. But sooner or later I feel that something will happen that will make it settle down and become a very buoyant market.
-Of course Astran doesn't just deal with the Middle East, but most of the awkward places in the area:Turkcv. Iran, even Iraqthat was 40% of its work at one time."There's a glint in his eye and he becomes more animated when talking about Astran taking gravel to Romford clearly doesn't compare with his recent load of mini-submarines for the exotic east.
Currently Astran's big project is a factory move-shipping a whole plant, complete with a 100-tonne steel press. from Wolverhampton to the Iranian capitatTehran."Needless to say it's causing a few grey hairs,he says.-That said, it's the sort of work that Astran should he involved in as it's very good at it and most people would run a mile."
In fact he reckons there's a certain attitude at Astran that has largely gone from the rest of the industry. It's most noticeable among Astran's owner-drivers, he says:" When you get involved with it it's a bit like going back 20-30 years with its gung-ho at titude.We've got one or two drivers who would fit with that ethos but the majority are much more calculated about what they do today.
"You can't expect drivers to get under a truck and change a piston in the middle of the night nowadays. It's quite gratifying to get back to the 'hacks to the wall' attitude."
The challenge now, he says, is to develop the Firm from its traditional position of overland trucking specialist to freight forwarder.
Co-owner Peter Carroll takes a less romanticised approach: "I've never been a trucker's trucker: I'm not very interested in the specifics of trucks. I get more of a thrill out of solving problems. One of which is the question of whether you can take over a small but relatively well known forwarder like Astran and turn it into something bigger."
Carroll's plan is to double its current £2m turnover within I 8 months.
But despite this hard-headed business appraisal the conversation returns to the challenges of the region. Carroll says:"We are a little concerned about the current situation regarding Iran. Normally you'd read something about its nuclear programme in the Sunday papers and it's impossibly distant.
Biggest markets But for us Iran is one of our biggest markets and it brings it home quite forcibly to you: you stop worrying about the congestion on the M62 and start worrying about President Bush invading instead." Thompson has already been forced to send a SeymourTransport truck,cotnplete with UK-spec and lack of air-con, to the Middle East.
As we talk, he bemoans the standard of driving over here and the fact he rarely gets the chance to climb into the cab these days.
I suggest that given his quest for excitement it won't be long before he finds himself somewhere on the road to Saudi Arabia. He mulls this over and rejects the idea totally. Then he pauses again and says: "I'd like to do one journey... actually don't print that -they'll stick me in a truck when they read it. But perhaps when I've got time I'll do one journey... I'd like to see it first hand." •