OPERATOR PROFILE
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seller for the company. Deputy managing director Paul Gregory reckons Premium Express is a "unique selling proposition" for Tuffnells. Some 85% of Premium Express loads are delivered the following day anyway, says Gregory, and he is convinced that such a level of service at half the price of Priority 1 will win many friends.
Premium Express is not the only new development at Tuffnells: the company has been reshaping its profile quite quickly in the past two years or so. In January 1986 Tuffnells acquired the assets of Salox 24, a Liverpool-based specialist express courier company. Salox is a troubleshooter which likes to transport the difficult, the odd and the urgent.
Two months later the firm took over Five Star Express at Evesham in Worcestershire and has incorporated the premises into its 15-strong nationwide depot network. Then 18 months ago Tuffnells opened a brand new depot alongside Heathrow airport, with its eye on the main chance. Since then, the company has gone into partnership with Air France to run Domicile Express — a full-scale parcels delivery service from the UK into France. Finally, on 6 April this year, Tuffnells opened another new depot, this time at Ipswich.
REITER SERVICE
Gregory says that all of this leads to one thing only — a better level of service. He says that he will not compete in the cut-throat British parcels market on price alone: "We're not the cheapest," he says, "not by a long chalk, and we're not kilomillionaires either. Who cares wins."
Tuffnells' whole approach is geared to regular, rather than one-off parcels business: "The majority of our clients are into repeat business," says Gregory. "We definitely prefer to offer a local and longterm service." There is no hub at the centre of Tuffnells parcels operation. It uses a highly complex inter-depot trunking network, and a continental-style demount and drawbar operation based on a fleet of 40-plus Volvo F6 and F7 two-axle rigids, all fitted with 7.3m-long demountable box bodies. Most of the long-distance trunking is done by the drawbars, which are shunted from depot to depot.
According to operations director Tony Mason, "if you get your trunking right, you still only need to handle the parcel once. I reckon you get too much downtime with tractors and trailers. Our Volvos are out working all day long." The drop-leg demounts were being filled up with loads at the Tuffnells Leighton Buzzard depot while we were visiting on a Monday afternoon, ready to swap with the Volvos as they came in that evening from their other runs. Tuffnells also runs about 200 7.5-tonne box vans and ten 3.5-tonne vans. All bear the company's bright green livery and most are bought and written off over four to six years: "We're thinking of going to four years on everything." TDG prefers that member companies such as Tuffnells own their trucks as assets on the books, but at present about 5% of the fleet is on contract hire as a sort of experiment. All of the fleet service and maintenance operations are contracted out: "If you want to employ mechanics, own a garage," says Mason.
Tuffnells system works on four main sorting centres: Leighton Buzzard, Sheffield, Birmingham and Haydock. Everything runs to a railway-style timetable, says Mason, and "we have to be on time to make sure the trunks interlock." Tuffnells calls the long distance drawbars "through boxes" and they are swapped from one vehicle to another.
Independent is Tuffnells sister company in TDG, and in March of this year the holding company merged the two parcels outfits into one sub-holding company called Express Development Services. Operationally, this has meant that Tuffnells and Independent have combined their operations at four depots around the country: Ipswich, Lanark, Newcastle and Carlisle. "We have never done this before; it is all very much a development of 1987," says Gregory, "In fact, we do some work as their sub-contractor nowadays." The idea is to minimise duplication. "We give Independent traffic for South Wales and Cornwall," says Mason.
Tuffnells seems to take a very sanguine view of the market, but there are no bombastic slogans, and no impossible-tohit targets. "The overnight market has definitely been over-fished," says Gregory. "All we want to be is the number one profit-maker. Never forget the bottom line — that is how we are always judged in TDG." Gregory calls TDG his "bankers" and he is insistent that future investment in the company will only come about if he keeps the figures in healthy shape.
TDG, and Tuffnells in particular, is starting to look towards Europe. Tuffnells reckons that the French connection with Domicile Express and Air France offers huge potential growth: "We must ensure that we can offer the service we advertise first," says Gregory. Transgo and Ostra are other European group names that will come forward over the next 12 months or so. Domicile only handles small packages at the moment, but customers need only give Tuffnells one call in the UK and the collections are through Heathrow.
One of Tuffnells' more interesting departures is an employee profitparticipation scheme in which all of the firm's full-time employees can share in the company's fortunes. At Leighton Buzzard there is a sign telling everyone that the depot made 210,180 during April of this year, and there is another column to give the running total for the year.
Tuffnells seems to exploit every opportunity that comes its way. The drivers are encouraged to be salesmen: "They visit our customers every day after all," says Robinson. For every good tip that is converted into new business for Tuffnells, the driver who spotted the opportunity is rewarded with gift vouchers. "The drivers have brought in 2,000 leads in the past 12 months," says Robinson, "and a large chunk of those have been converted successfully." CI by Geoff Hadwick