In the 19605, American advertising guru Bill Bembach came up
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with the line: "How does the man who drives a snowplough get to work?" The answer, which was in the text of the ad in which it appeared. was that he drives a Volkswagen. -Because it's reliable" was the message.
So, working a similar thread, we might ask: -How do the passengers on a cruise liner for eight weeks get their toothpaste or their KitKats?" The answer, according to Harding Brothers Retail, is that they arc all delivered by road to the ship's destination ports The reason for this, the company says, is that it's the most secure and cost-effective way of making sure the goods arrive on time. The list of materials carried is large.
Since the latest cruise liners, such as the Sea bourn Odyssey, are essentially floating shopping malls with luxury hotel accommodation, it includes all duty-free goods, plus many of passengers' favourite branded foods and snacks It's common for Marmite and Pringles to share loadspace with clothing and designer handbags.
Harding Brothers is a Bristol-based company that supplies provisions to cruise ships; and it has branches in Europe, Australia and the USA.
PLM Transport, another Bristol company, is contracted by Harding Brothers to deliver those provisions. Harding Brothers used to have its own transport fleet, but decided to outsource the operation because it no longer wanted to be involved in finding backloads from the Greek, Italian and Spanish ports from which its customers' cruise ships operated. This is where PLM Transport came in.
Cruise ship loads are dateand time-critical, with PLM's Volvo or Scania artics lining up beside the ship to deliver those essential Jimmy Choos, Mars Bars and even stocks of disposable nappies for the babies on board.
Up to 12 deliveries a week are not uncommon to cruise ships, sometimes involving two or three trucks servicing one ship. Ports serviced by PLM include Civitavecchia, Livorno, Barcelona, Genoa and Piraeus.
Customer service
PLM is a comparatively young company. Now in its seventh year, the firm is owned and managed by three working directors: Geoff Pomroy, Pat Murphy and Peter Scrivin.The company operates 25 vehicles in a mixed fleet of mostly artics. In addition to a couple of spare rigids, there are 14 Scania artics, predominantly R-480 Topliners, a DAF XF105.460, six Volvo Flis and two Volvo FL rigids. Despite the European work, the artics are mostly three-axle examples for maximum flexibility.
PLM places a great deal of emphasis on customer service, reveals Pomroy."We take pride in offering customers the ability to make precision deliveries."
In addition to the work supplying cruise liners for Harding Brothers, PLM has another blue-chip customer in the form of warehousing and supply chain management company Davies Turner.
The Davies Turner Group is a substantial firm with an annual turnover in the region of £140m and about 65,000m= of multi-user warehouse space in the UK and Ireland. It has used PLM Transport for several years.
Roger Lucy is a director at Davies Turner and knows PLM's management team well.
He reveals that his company has recently uprated its relationship with PLM: "We used to use it for local transport, but we have enhanced the way we work, so we can link into its wider network of vehicles. We're also using PLM's transport management system for routeing.
He adds: "Customers' goods often need to be picked up today, and in Germany, for example, the day after.
"We load around 70 units to 100 units a week for export on behalf of our customer base in the West Country. We also trunk on a nightly basis to Davies Turner hubs across the UK."
Lucy continues: 'PLM Transport is a well-run organisation, which understands what we want. It has good communication with its drivers."
A modern approach Using the two new Volvo FLs, PLM offers daily coverage for Davies Turner across the West Country from Cornwall up to Hereford and Gloucester and across to Salisbury.
Lucy is impressed with PLM's up-to-date fleet: -We've modernised our approach to domestic transport. We have linked some internal systems to those of PLM Transport for the transfer of data, and [the firm] also provides a number of international vehicles for us."
In addition to having a young and reliable fleet, PLM works hard to keep operating costs down by helping its drivers get the best possible fuel economy The company began using Volvo FH artics in 2008, and Murphy reports they are delivering up to 2mpg better economy than the other vehicles employed on the same duty cycle with identical payloads and routes.
Unlike the vehicles they replace, which used EGR, PLM's Volvos all use SCR technology to achieve Euro-4 and Euro-5 emissions compliance. Adblue consumption, says Murphy, is running at around 3% to 4% of diesel, and the FH's overall economy of 9.5mpg includes Adblue usage.
The Volvos operate at 40 tonnes GCW on Continental work and backload fully whenever they can. The refrigerated Gray & Adams trailers enable the trucks to return with fresh produce, such as melons from northern Italy, in a mixture of chilled and ambient sections.
All the Volvos are equipped with 1-Shift transmissions, which is an important factor when it comes to delivering good fuel economy figures."The drivers love the I-Shift, Murphy says. He is also happy with the driver comfort in the FHs,adding:"The bed is comfortable and the driving position is OK, too.
Murphy has extensive experience of operating Volvo trucks going back to when he was an owner-driver making the trip to the Middle East in the 1970s.
The two FHs he purchased in 2008 were the first new Volvo trucks to be operated by PLM.
All the Volvos in the fleet today, including the FL 18-tormers, were ordered via local dealer Truck and Bus Wales and West.
While the FHs are on two-year Volvo repair and maintenance contracts, the FLs are on three-year deals with the dealer in nearby Burcott Road. "Wales and West has looked after us well; we have a good relationship."
According to Pomroy, the Volvos were purchased after a 12-month comparison test between two FHs and two DAF XF 105 Euro-5 460s. "We wanted to see how they performed in the real world. The FHs delivered up to 9.5mpg straight out of the box." •