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CEIS
GIIT!
Price Express Transport specialises in
transporting heavy-duty ovens, but four years
ago the firm added another string to its bow when it joined a pallet network. Tim
Maughan finds out if it was a good move.
David Price entered the road transport world in 1975, starting out with a single van handling mining tools, foundry ceramics and general industrial gear. By 1979 he was operating half a dozen vans.That same year he ventured into the land of limited companies and Sheffield-based Price Express Transport was born. Now, 26 years on, he runs a fleet of 30 trucks.
Image is important to Price.A few years ago he hired a graphic design company to come up with a livery for his fleet. "They gave us three options," he recalls. "1 went for the most distinctive one, which was a brave move. It's yellow and blue and it always gets us noticed."
The fleet is dominated by 12-tonne rigid& a mixture of curtainsiders and boxes.All are equipped with tail-lifts and sleeper cabs.
Price Express also fields two Iveco Dailies — a 3.5 and a 5.2-tonner— and there are four tractor uni ts, a pair of double-deck curtainsided trailers, three standard curtainsiders and an Iveco 7.5-tonner with a double sleeper cab.
Tailored fleet
A mixed fleet certainly, but no operator buys a truck for the sake of variety alone.These vehicles are specifically tailored to meet business demands "We have the vans and rigids because we specialise in delivering commercial catering equipment to schools, hospitals and prisons." says Price."We also deliver vending machines."
Unlike supermarket regional distribution centres, or drops to other large firms which have their own lifting infrastructure, schools and the like don't tend to operate their own forklifts, so the tail-lifts are vital. Nor do customers want their goods to be passed from operator to operator.
"We promise our customers that we will deliver directly," Price explains." We do not put loads through a hub, or use subcontractors. This is important in this type of work, because the chance of damage is quite high."
End delivery actually settling the machine in its resting place, can also be an "awkward" task, he adds.
Drivers need to get to the customers' premises, unload and then situate the consign ment. On large oven drops, trucks are double-manned to allow for manhandling the load. Manufacturing represents around 10% of Britain's economy, a shadow of what it once was. But in the UK, one of the largest economies on the planet, that 10% is sizeable. Countries such as Germany and Japan tend to make high-profile consumer items, such as cars and electrical goods, but in the UK manufacturing tends to be hidden from the public gaze. A lot of UK
FJO4 AYZ
111111111111r -4W manufacturing is taken up making heavy-duty equipment such as medical machinery aviation parts and, of course, specialist catering equipment.
Price Express Transport handles Britishmade convection ovens and large domestic cookers, with price tags in the region of£3,500. It also carries ovens manufactured overseas.
Industrial magnets
Importers and manufacturers pay Price, not the end customer.-Sometimes we unpack and install them," he explains, although gas specialists connect the apparatus to the mains. The fleet also transports industrial magnets, which are used in musical speakers.
Price favours Iveco: "We have always bought the Ivecos from Sherwood Commercial Vehicles, our local dealership. They have always given us good service and we have always had a good relationship with them."
What of the trucks themselves? "The fuel consumption is good and the new models are very driver friendly," he says.
The firm is also involved in transporting pallets, although a few years ago Price was reluctant to dip into this sector. Many components make up a network and the uninitiated may worry that they may be let down. "We resisted the pallet networks when they got under way eight years ago. I felt that I would never do business with a network, because I was unsure about their reliability."
After careful consideration he took the jump and joined PalletForce in 2001:1 have really been pleasantly surprised; we provide a next-day service to Haverfordwest. It's a huh-and-spoke system. I have an obligation to get our products into the huh, and to bring the freight out."
Price ExpressTransport gets paid to deliver inbound goods, and pays PalletForce to put outbound loads into the system.
Inevitably, pallet networks can put pressure on an operator. Service levels have to be maintained and because there can be so many strands in these systems, operators' mistakes have an instant impact on other network members. For Price, there is little room for error. PalletForce, he says, maintains strict discipline, which encourages members to abide by the rules for the greater good.
Price ExpressTransport also offers storage facilities and small-scale picking and packing services,which help the company turn over £5m.
Sheffield has lost much of its steel fashioning industry and Price's depot stands on the site of an old rolling mill. "The city suffered a massive decline, but it is slowly finding its feet and European Union money is coming in," he says.
The general trend is one of improvement, although there can be harsh economic peaks and troughs:"Since Christmas the local economy has taken a turn for the worse. Downturns make things more competitive, because people [road transport operators] are after limited work." Competition is tough outside the Sheffield arealb flourish, Price invests in specialist kit such as the double-deckers. They can haul 56 pallets, but cost £22,000 each.
His business plan is two-fold: stick with general freight and pallets, and continue to serve the niche industrial oven market.
You have to adopt a pragmatic approach in this business, he asserts. Markets and working practices change and operators have to roll with them."When I started off," he says, "customers were happy with one man and his truck dropping a full load."
Bigger scale
Years ago, there was something rather quaint about the sight of an owner-driver leisurely dropping goods in his area.These days things work on a bigger scale and customers tend to pay fleet operators for dedicated same-day, full-load drops.
If ever there was an example of a dramatic change in road transport methods, it is computers. Price used to handle them in the 1970s when they were the size of washing machines. He would carry a handful of them in a CV with a tail-lift.
With the digital age computers have become much smaller and the more compact models can be delivered by post, which neatly dispenses with trucks and tail-lifts.
There are larger economic factors, too. The industry moves on and, as it does, global finances dictate conditions.
In the past 30 years Price has weathered three major world recessions and puts the longevity of his business down to running a professional operation and adapting to change where necessary.
Price believes the industry will become increasingly integrat ed. High running overheads mean that operators need to assist one another, he believes. And nowhere is this more evident than in the pallet sector.
"As costs rise, the economies of running your own trucks around the country become less feasible: pallet networks reduce operating costs." •