Alan Millar meets their leader
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BL dealers hold the key
THE LOSS of 1,057 more jobs at three of Leyland Trucks' main plants (CM. January 28) was another twist in a sorry tale of the decline of the largest of the three surviving British-owned lorry builders. Imminent bad news — probably closure — of the Bathgate engine and export lorry plant will be another blow, but the business is not beyond salvation.
Leyland Trucks has to recognise that the 30 per cent market share it once commanded in Britain is unlikely to be regained in the foreseeable future. Export business has a bleak future, too, for it has probably neglected the European market for too long to make a big impact, and Third World economies have slumped so much that their potential must be considered a lost cause.
But, according to Sam Newton, the newly elected chairman of the Leyland Truck Distributors' Association, the company is poised to regain market leadership from Ford, and it has the potential to overtake Volvo and Daf to lead the artic market.
Newton, who represents all 56 Leyland Trucks distributors, works virtually from Leyland's back yard. As managing director of Gilbraith Commercials at Chorley, he can be at the manu facturer's headquarters within minutes and can call in for early morning meetings without compromising the interests of his own business.
He is an extrovert, fast-talking Lancastrian with supreme faith in Leyland's products, but it is a faith founded on realism. He accepts that the company has made mistakes in the past.
Hindsight shows that the 500Series fixed-head diesel was little short of a disaster, although the last models built made up for quality deficiencies of thepast, and he realises now that the strategy for launching the T45 range — and which he subscribed to at the time — may have been wrong.
Instead of devoting an all-out effort to try to compete with the European built maximum weight tractive units, he would opt today to go for the volume market at the bottom of the weight range.
"All of our horizons were clouded. We went after the Continentals and didn't go enough for the volume market," he told me.
But Newton now sees early signs of a home market recovery. Last year's 15 per cent mar ket share reversed a decade of decline and took Leyland to second position, ahead of Bedford. January's registrations kept Leyland in what is probably a temporary top position, with Ford trailing far behind as it has yet to adjust itself to the aftereffects of its artificially high October figures last year.
Newton believes, however, that Ford's day has passed, and that improved Leyland products will help make its products take great strides at the lighter end of the market.
Its big chance, he argues, will come this autumn with the launch of the T211 Iformerly MT211), the Terrier-replacement 7.5 to 10-tonner which will complete the model renewal programme begun with the launch of the Roadtrain 38-tonner in 1980. Newton sees no reason why a 20 per cent market share cannot be within Leyland's reach, He plays down the affairs of Gilbraith when talking about Leyland and the LTDA, but his own company is already achieving local market penetration well in excess of Leyland's nationa snare, and Newton believes the distributors owe it to Leyland to lead it back to the top. "We're better than our image," he told me, and he intends to give his fellow distributors the leadership necessary if his targets are to be met.
Already, he has initiated a more regular series of meetings to speed the flow of information between Leyland, its dealers and its customers.
The emphasis, he insists, must be placed on salesmen, for he accepts the criticism that competitors have gained sales in some cases because they were better at selling their products. Newton believes that there is more to be gained by employing an engineer with selling flair as a vehice salesman. "You can train a person to sell soap powder, but you can't sell a 38-tonne truck to someone who doesn't want to buy it or can't pay for it."
He likens a good commercial vehicle salesman to a consultant; he would rather maintain credibility by selling nothing than the wrong vehicle. His own sales force has long experience, and includes a former ownerdriver whose down-to-earth practical experience helps seal deals in Cumbria.
Salesmen, according to Newton, should have enough faith in a Leyland to be able to sell it on its merits and at a profit. "If you have to look for other ways of selling besides price, then you must look at what you're selling."
In return for the sales effort, Newton wants Government sympathy, if not support, for Leyland. The profitable parts should not be sold off by BL, and he wants to see their profits, after reinvestment, being put into a central pool to keep the weaker firms going in troubled years.
The present problems at Leyland had their seeds sown when potential investment cash in the then profitable commercial vehicle business was diverted to the car firms. Now, the car firms are recovering and Leyland Trucks is in deep trouble.
He fears that a labour-intensive business like lorry manufacture could lose out and even more jobs would disappear if no help is given.
A high priority, he believes, should be a decision to provide Government cash to keep the joint Cummins/Leyland B-Series engine project alive. Leyland's inability to fund the project is one of the reasons why Bathgate will probably close, but Newton says the deal need not die with the Scottish factory. There is capacity, he says, at the now dormant 500-Series engine shop at Leyland, which could be used to make the engine.
And there is a lesson to be learned from the scrapped 1980 plan to make ZF gearboxes for Freighters at Albion's Glasgow plant — another establishment with a less than rosy future. It is a lesson that must not be forgotten, according to Newton, for the B-Series would probably be built elsewhere in Europe, with Cummins possibly signing another joint deal in Belgium or Spain.
A joint deal with Leyland, and continued availability of Leyland's other in-house engines, would not only assure it a share of the engine's export business to other manufacturers, but would also provide more work for its distributors, whose workshops are crying out for more work.
They still have facilities geared for a 30 per cent market share, but if Newton has his way, the gap between that and present market share will be a much narrower one.