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Venture boasts strong Linqs
Page 8
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or by Dominic Perry
Linq Alliance, the 28-member commercial venture from the Transport Association, Is up, running and ready to take on the Coliaths of the industry, say its bosses.
Chairman Chris Sturman, who has previously worked for Wincanton and TN among others, believes that Ling can offer a new perspective" to the industry. He adds: "The range of skills and facilities in Ling means that we can cater for virtually every variety of load."
This is a view shared by one of the firm's directors, Ken Devereux from Middlesborough-based KW Devereux. He adds: "It creates a fairly sizeable alternative for people who want a national player.
"Hopefully we can offer a better service—customers will be dealing with people who are much closer to the ground. There's probably an awful lot of middle management being removed. Also within those 28 companies there are lots of firms doing different things within different markets. Transport is not Just about curtainsider deliveries, it's about offering the services that people want. If you've got a group of companies or a single entity that can do everything for you there's bound to be an advantage in that."
So far the member companies have contributed 210,000 each, with a further 210,000 promised, giving the fledgling company start-up capital of just over 10.5m.
Although the truck demonstrated at last week's Institute of Logistics and Transport conference was sporting a red and white livery, Sturman insists that each individual company is free to use the Ling logo In Its own colour scheme—for example, Meachers Transport will retain its traditional yellow and red livery.
Unlike Jigsaw, the other recently launched alliance, Ling has not restricted Itself to having one firm in a given geographical area. For example, on paper it would appear that Wyvern Cargo and Meachers Transport, based in Poole and Southampton respectively, would be rivals for work Into the same area, as would Newcastle-based Simpson Brothers and Teeside firm KW Devereux, However, Peter Simpson from Simpson Brothers refuses to see this as a problem: We are all interested in certain parts of the country and I don't particularly like traffic to Teeside because I always end up running the 40 miles back empty, but, if we eliminate that, it could make us extremely competitive."
Martin Brown, boss of TH Brown, adds that the variety of specialised skills within Ling is already attracting a broad spectrum of contract enquiries including tanker operations.