Ryder close to completion on integration of Hill Hire
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Words: Justin Stanton
RYDER’S INTEGRATION of Hill Hire should be complete this summer, one year on from the £151m acquisition last June (CM 16 June 2011).
Ryder Europe vice-president and MD David Hunt tells CM: “We always said the integration would take about a year. It wasn’t a small acquisition – it doubled the size of our business. And we didn’t want to be one of those companies that changed the sign on the door and said the integration was completed. We wanted to make sure that we did things right.”
Moving to the present, he adds: “We’re now rebranding locations, putting new workwear into locations – so we’re now doing all those things that say we’re nearly complete. By June, we’ll be able to say the integration is complete.” Inevitably, there have been changes: Hill Hire’s Bradford head ofice was closed at the end of last year, and there has been some consolidation of sites. Hunt reveals more detail about the latter: “We also identiied six sites that were within 10 miles of each other and we’ve consolidated those sites. And I think the word is ‘consolidated’ not ‘closed’ . The sites affected are: Glasgow, Leeds, Avonmouth, Birmingham, Hull and north Manchester. And ive out of those six are Ryder depots folding into Hill Hire depots.”
Trailer rental
This goes against many pundits’ expectations; Ryder also surprised the trailer rental industry by committing to Hill Hire’s existing presence in the market – indeed a number of rivals approached Hunt to see how much Ryder wanted for Hill Hire’s trailer business, but they were left in no doubt as to Ryder’s position.
“We now have 10,000 trailers where we only had 600 before. We are in the trailer business. We have no interest in selling [the business],” Hunt states emphatically.
Also retained by Ryder are the entire Hill Hire account management team and the senior management team of John Rice (now sales director) and Adam Fairbotham (operations director). Reinforcing Ryder’s commitment to trailers, it has also taken on John Murray, the former MD of TIP, as sales director for trailers.
The apparent ease with which Ryder has progressed the integra tion is almost certainly a result of plenty of preparation and thorough due diligence; it’s also a result of the astonishingly complementary it.
According to Hunt, the two businesses only had an overlap of 22 major customers. Given Ryder’s emphasis on own-account operators and light to medium trucks, and Hill Hire’s focus on third-party operators and heavy trucks and trailers, this is hardly surprising.
Hunt declares: “It gives us a great bedrock from which to build the business. There are opportunities for Ryder to add value to customers [both its own and Hill Hire’s] and there are cross-selling opportunities, but Ryder has always sold on value and service – and just because we’re bigger, [it doesn’t mean] that is going to change.” Another statistic highlights the capacity for growth: in 2007 Hill Hire had 10,000 vehicles and 22,000 trailers – twice the size it was when Ryder bought it nine months ago...
Fleet order
Having spent that £151m on Hill Hire, Ryder is not resting on its laurels: it has already announced a £24.6m order for 530 vehicles (CM 15 March), including about 200 Mercedes-Benz Axors, and there will be a second leet order of around £25m later in the year. This follows £22m invested in 2011 and £18m in 2010.
Positioning itself ahead of the introduction of Euro-6, Ryder boasts a leet that now stands at 86% Euro-5.
Hunt is at pains to point out that Ryder is not just about the physical assets, it’s about the people too. “Every single employee got a bonus of some description last year. Our staff performed and they were rewarded,” he says.
“A lot of our staff read Motor Transport and Commercial Motor: my message is that I’d really like to thank all of them for their support. We couldn’t have asked for more and they could not have given more.” ■
Ryder’s fleet
LCVs: 3,000 Rigids: 7,000 Tractor units: 3,000 Trailers: 10,000