THE HISTORY
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Mark Jones started he company in 1996 as a courier francnise with Mercury Express UK. One man and a van," he says. "I bought a franchise and, unfortunately, it was the franchise that failed."
But his experience held him in good stead, and he gradually began to develop the business from a fleet of vans carrying out courier work to buying a 7.5-tonne truck in 1998 and an 18-tonner in 2000. Jones soon realised that courier work was too unpredictable.
You could start the day with nothing and then the phone goes and you'd be flat out, but every morning you could start with nothing and that's scary," he says.
A desire for greater business security drove the inevitable shift towards more express haulage, rather than next-day and single-item deliveries.
"Once we got the 18-tonner, we found the work was more stable, and then we got into artics. We bought our first one when we joined [network] UPN in 2001 as a founding member."
Getting involved with overnight pallet deliveries proved a turning point: it made freight the majority of EFS's work rather than courier work. In 2006, Jones joined UK Pallets, and today the courier work represents just 5% of its business.