TAKING THE PLUNGE
Page 19
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Paul Everett (left) started trading as Everett Transpi Services on 4 June. He runs an eight-year-old Rena Premium that he bought outright and has a half share a tipping trailer, specialising in bulk grain. He is ready take on work from all corners of the industry.
It takes a certain type of individual to start up as a or man operator, Everett says. "It was an idea I have be thinking about for a few years. I have been driving five years and fancied having a go at it myself.
"Everywhere I have worked I have seen stuff go wror and I thought if they can do it that way and make a prc why can I not make money myself?"
Everett says he began to look seriously at running own business in December 2009, but it took him f months to get the business off the ground because the amount of paperwork involved.
He raised the funds necessary by working as a 9 employed relief driver and used the same limit company he had set up to be self-employed to business as an owner driver.
1 was saving money, and it came to the point whe had to stop telling people I was going to do it and gt all started, he adds.
Everett works on a dedicated business for c customer where he had spent time as a relief drive the agriculture sector but says that the work is guaranteed and the contract will cover him only September. "Nothing is guaranteed for the rest of year," he says.
Everett says the whole process has been one of st organisation. He had to create a spreadsheet of incomings and outgoings based on the number of we he expects to work every year.
His one bugbear? The speed at which the Trt Commissioners' office operates. "The envelope that I I to send them was fat," he says of his 0-licence applicat "The actual process is straightforward, but if t have any questions it gets slow. They had a coupli queries about my operating centres and the tx answer was simple.
'But every time you have to answer a question it it letter with a first-class stamp and they respond sending it second class. That and the policy to repl each query on a first-come-first-served basis mee had to wait another two or three weeks to get startec
• You can follow Paul's progress on the Truck forums where he posts as repton',