Owner-drivers in favour
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• Parcels company Tuffnells is restructuring its workforce to include a greater proportion of owner-drivers. Where possible vacancies will be filled by owner-drivers, says managing director Paul Gregory.
Tuffnells, which employs 500 drivers, is recruiting owneroperators at its 15 depots nationwide, although there will be more vacancies in the South. Gregory says that the recruitment drive is the result of a surge of business, particularly for Tuffnells' guaranteed services which has seen the biggest area of growth as more companies switch to just-intime systems.
The company laid off about 40 in-house drivers at the beginning of the year, but has gradually built its workforce back up to full strength.
Gregory refuses to commit himself to a target figure for the workforce expansion. But he denies that the earlier layoffs were made with the aim of substituting owner-drivers. He says that business has grown by about 10% since the "quiet times" earlier in the year.
About 150 Tuffnells' drivers are already owner-operators and Gregory says that they have "provided a very good performance". Reducing fixed costs and improving profitability are the motives for the change, he says.
In addition, Tuffnells is reducing the proportion of Tuffnells-owned vehicles in its fleet in favour of contract hiretrucks. Gregory predicts that the split will be about 60% contract hire, 40% Tuffnells', compared with 40% contract hire at present.
Tuffnells is 50%-owned by the Transport Development Group and French parcels company Ducros, which bought a stake in the company last June.
The Transport Development Group has bought National Gold Storage's Dublin cold store, giving TDG around 20% of Ireland's public cold store capacity.