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DOWN TO THE SEA IN TRUCKS

29th January 1971
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Page 42, 29th January 1971 — DOWN TO THE SEA IN TRUCKS
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

by Brian Cottee

WITH all that has been said and written about former C-licensees getting into haulage, and hauliers being pushed out by harsh legislation, it is easy to forget that there are other reasons for road transport comings and goings. Such as the (admittedly rare) case of a company spilling over from one transport mode into another.

Such a development can be particularly interesting for the way in which a company familiar with the demands of a mobile service industry approaches the new field of activity. The onlooker has generally studied the game pretty shrewdly before deciding to join in, and may see the prospects and pitfalls more clearly than many of the established participants.

This certainly seems a fair assessment in the case of the Hammond Group, of Dover.

Ten years ago George Hammond and Co (Shipping) Ltd was a shipbroking company looking after the crews, passengers and general provisioning of passenger vessels, and was also operating as a Lloyds Agency—since 1869 in fact. Now the company has grown into a group engaged in road haulage, warehousing and distribution, freight forwarding, Customs clearance, stevedoring, refrigerated container operator and an interest in a clearing house. Diversification —but all within the general realm of freight movement.

Evidence of the management's determination to be up with the front runners in efficiency is to be seen, for instance, in its introduction of a pilot work-study scheme and its fresh ideas on short-term cold storage.

The plunge was taken, and the high standards set, by the brothers David and Roger Ryeland and John Coe—Hammond directors. David is mainly responsible for the haulage and storage, his brother the shipping and associated activities, and Mr Coe for Customs clearances.

Every facet of the business is built around one common factor: quality of customer service. Nothing is done on the cheap; no corners are cut. And the volume of business is growing rapidly.

In the early Sixties the passenger ship broking trade began to decline fairly sharply, so the Ryelands expanded the limited stevedoring at Dover docks into a substantial part of the group business. This brought them sharply into contact with road freight, and not least with some of its problems and shortcomings. After trying, in vain, to organize some of the local hauliers to provide a balanced service they set up South Eastern Clearing House Ltd. Hammond has a one-third share in this, East Kent Packers (whose transport branch is South Eastern Transport) have one-third and local hauliers the remaining third.

Regular cheque

The clearing house transformed the local transport situation, I was told. It now uses 50 hauliers a month and has been a major factor in getting average loadings up. It guarantees a regular cheque, too (on the 21st of the month following the month the traffic was moved) and for small hauliers in particular this has proved a boon.

Where members are offered dock traffic through Dover. Newhaven or Sheerness this is handled through SECH. One of the biggest problems recently has been to get enough vehicles to handle the clearing house's traffic volume.

The clearing house sends its carriers copies of the consignment notes and then puts out a credit advice, so there is no need for the hauliers to do any paperwork for SECH traffic.

Hammond's main direct involvement in road haulage is in its 95 per cent ownership of W. E. Reeve Ltd (now renamed George Hammond (Transport) Ltd), a 42-vehicle, 56-trailer haulage company based at Sittingbourne, Kent (the other 5 per, cent being held by the manager). This haulier was bought five years ago as part of a diversification plan.

Hammond (Transport) has a predominantly AEC fleet, including 15 heavy artics, and most of its work is general dry freight to the Midlands. But about a fifth of all the traffic is now Continental, a development almost entirely concentrated in the past two years, and so most of the work of the heavy artics is involved in bringing export traffic from all over the country to Dover and distributing imports in the reverse manner.

The rigids on general haulage carry mainly paper and engineering products, though there is a great deal of imported fruit and general goods handled through SECH, some of which comes Reeve's way. In fact some 50 to 60 hauliers (including BRSL) with over 400 vehicles are available to the clearing house, though only 14 operators are actually members of SECH.

Much of Reeve's traffic is regular and stable—for example it has four shunters doing at least two Dovers a night from Sittingbournc and sometimes three.

Rates have been difficult to maintain but the company has been getting increasingly firm about demurrage. Increasingly, waiting time charges are being written into contracts in advance and there has been a noticeable improvement in vehicle turn-round as a result. Another factor has been a positive campaign of educating customers on the cost of standing vehicles, and encouraging them to phone to fix a time for loads to be picked up.

Revenue and cost figures compiled at the Sittingbourne depot are sent to Hammond at Dover for analysis, and individual vehicle results are produced. This system is now being mechanized.

Driving hours

Like many other companies, Reeve has encountered problems with the new driving hours and considers that the60-hour week in particular is much too inflexible. It is also inflationary—for example drivers who have worked their full 60 hours by Friday noon, including a full 11 on the first Sunday, have to be paid a full 8-hour rate to comply with the legal 40-hour minimum. The Sittingbourne depot has administration buildings erected in 1968 and a workshop with three full-time fitters and one auto-electrician. Virtual standardization on AECs simplifies store-keeping. An Ultrasonic vehicle washer has been installed in one of the older buildings on the site and is on hire at £33 a week.

The latest development—which should open up new distribution activities for Reeve is the erection of a Canadian-design ' Butler's warehouse of 19,200 sq ft, a clearspan building measuring 240 ft by 85 ft. It has two doors and an insulated roof and two fork-lift trucks are employed in it.

The building is designed to hold 3000 tons of newsprint, three reels high_ Original expert advice suggested stacking four reels high, but when Reeve examined the safety aspects of toting reels weighing nearly 2 tons at heights of perhaps 30ft it decided the risk was too great.

The principal Continental work is trailer traffic, bringing 1200 to 1500 tons of flaxboard from Belgium a month, balanced to some extent by paper and tile exports. The flaxboard makes a tricky load, which needs special attention, and some hauliers have got out of the traffic. But Hammond has specialized, developed a great deal of know-how and has been repaid with a steady and profitable flow of work.

The other Hammond haulage activity is with six refrigerated 30ft Duramin containers on York skeletal trailers using propane-powered Thermo King units. All have 4in. insulation and were the first Duramin fridge boxes to have Jolocla tracks in the floor.

One container is on a regular LondonZeebrugge service, two are based at Newhaven and used for meat and fruit and three are at Dover where the plan is to use them particularly on imported fruit, especially from about July each year when grapes are in glut. Apart from keeping fruit in better condition from vessel to main market, and therefore justifying a price to cover the more expensive transit, Hammond considers the fridge containers to be an economic form of short-term refrigerated storage, saving a handling into and a handling out of stores for vulnerable produce. There are plug-in points at strategic places in the group's Dover yards to keep the fridge units running from the mains.

George Hammond (Storage) Ltd is itself a flourishing part of the enterprise with a main single-span warehouse of 10,000 sq ft, a second building of 9600 sq ft and the novel facility of well-ventilated caves in the chalk cliffs which have proved ideal for perishable foodstuffs. There is 40,000 sq ft of space still available for development.

Diversifying into haulage and storage, Hammond also spread into stevedoring and now has 32 fork-lift trucks busily engaged in clearing cargoes through the Western Docks, the Dover Stevedoring Co Ltd averaging a thousand tons each working day. A ship with 2200 tons of potatoes and carrots, for example, is cleared in about three days, and most of the traffic is cleared straight through to Covent Garden and other central markets by the morning following its unloading.

Some of the imports now go by Freightliner but the vast amount is distributed by road and is handled through South Eastern Clearing House.

One aid to the very swift handling achieved by Dover Stevedoring is the intensive use of palletization while another is the use of LPG for 30 of the 32 fork-lifts, which gives them faster movement than diesel or electric power, says Mr Ryeland. The fork-lifts were formerly electric; they are all Clark models and are regarded as having a minimum working life of four years. At the opposite extremity of Dover, at the Eastern Docks, is Hammond's other business, the freight and customs agency in the roll-on terminal. Here Hammond provides clearance of import and export traffic, mainly on trailers, for traders, hauliers and receiving customers. In offices at the Eastern docks are 22 employees, with a telex link to the headquarters office, providing a 24-hour service and meeting any freight vessel. Hammond reckons it is now undertaking about 65 per cent of the

rapidly growing freight clearances through Dover.

Wine traffic

The vast -majority of Eastern Docks freight nowadays is to and from Zeebrugge, with that from Calais and Boulogne also on the increase. There has been a great growth of wine traffic, mainly from France and Germany. Freight clearance in a busy port is not a business to be entered lightly. I asked just what was involved in a typical case and was given this example: "An importer advises Hammond freight office that a vehicle is due on a particular ferry on a certain date; the vehicle is met on arrival, the importer making sure thaf invoices, packing list and other documents are made available either through the post or in the ship's bag; (there may be as many as 20 different consignments and 20 invoices relating to a single trailer); the goods are then entered as instructed by the importer and documents are presented to HM Customs for passing, after which duty is paid; the completed documents are then taken from the customs house to the customs transit area and handed to the landing officer for clearance, together with the goods if required; on completion of the clearance the out-of-customs charge note is then presented to the shed superintendent, who releases the vehicle or trailer. And all that is just for a straightforward case.

The Hammond Group has perhaps been fortunate in diversifying into associated activities just at the moment when growth was really accelerating (for example, Dover roll-on freight increased by 42 per cent between 1968 and 1969) but it is significant that the group's share of the work is also increasing, and there is no doubt in my mind that really efficient management is the key to Hammond's present and future success. It has a youth and vigour which might be taken as an example to many others in the transport world.


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