The yearling
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Just over a year after starting his own business, Paul Everett tells CM how he’s coped with inclement weather, tyre costs and real hard graft
Words: Christopher Walton / Images: Simon Everett
DO YOU REMEMBER your irst year in business? Paul Everett does. He started trading as Everett Transport Services on 4 June 2010. He runs a nine-year-old Renault Premium he bought outright after saving the money working as a self-employed relief driver. The past year has been a tale of snow, tyres, harvests and hard graft.
CM grabbed some time with Everett at the end of August, just before the harvest season kicked off in earnest. As a bulk grain tipper, this is the time for him to make some money and it kept Everett Transport Services in business last year. “The winter was a challenge, rather than the summer work. The harvest work kept me going through to September, then I spent three weeks in October doing traction work with a large potato haulier in Scarborough, then I had a quiet November,” he says.
Everett made contact with a haulier
on Teesside through CM’s online forum TruckNetUK.com, where he regularly posts as ‘repton’. The haulier, whom Everett refers to as Jeff (an owner-driver knows not to give away a good source of work) got together with Everett and is now an invaluable contact.
“He kept the wheels turning through the winter with some helpful advice and some business. He is a subcontractor and runs three bulk tippers as well as his own subbies working for him year round. I started working for Jeff in the last week of November and in the irst week of December it snowed.”
Costly breakdowns
Every haulier knows the effect of December’s inclement weather. The snow arrived just in time for the Christmas peak and brought Britain’s roads to a standstill and stopped hauliers from trading, which hit the bottom line of every operator from parcel irms to bulk tippers.
“At the end of the year, I was wondering what was I thinking? I also had two breakdowns in December and at the end of the month the trailer needed testing, which required work I was not expecting. By the end of December I worked out that the last time I had done a full month’s work was in October and all the money I had earned in the harvest...” He doesn’t need to inish the sentence.
But contacts and work came through and the beginning of the year saw an upturn in work. Now the plan is to make hay during the grain and potato harvest and put in some hard graft with away jobs in the winter.
Not everything can be planned ahead, however. Fuel has been continuing to rise. Everett says it has gone up 15% since this time last year (from approximately £1 to £1.15 a litre). “There has been an increase in costs, but rates have had to compensate for that. I had no reason at the time [I set up the business] to expect it to stay the same price. No one expects fuel to go down in price. There is a general rule that the price of fuel will only go up.
“The one thing that has gone up in price that has surprised me is tyres. I didn’t expect prices to rise so dramatically.” Everett originally budgeted £50 a week for tyres, but he has been unlucky with wear and tear. “A month ago I had a puncture and the tyres needed repairing. But, generally, I underestimated how much prices would go up and how many I would use. I wasn’t prepared for how hard I would be on the tyres.”
Steep learning curve
Overall, Everett says the frst 15 months in business have been a steep learning curve, although he was under no illusion that it was going to be easy. “There is money in it. I have got contacts, I can keep the wagon working until Christmas,” he says.
As for the future, Everett is looking for a new wagon. “This was advice from Jeff: bulk tippers hold their value very well and running a new one is the cheapest way of doing things.” Given the problems Everett had with his vehicle this year, he knows that when the wheels are not rolling he is not earning. Buying a new vehicle would allow him to run an asset (and he admits to being old fashioned when it comes to owning an asset as a haulier) into the ground before raising the money to buy new again.
Bulk tipping is not like running a parcel operation: the load is harsh on the trailer and the integrity and durability of the vehicle is paramount.
“You need to spend a bit of money on something that is reliable,” says Everett. We are sure his customers and subcontracting bosses will agree that the same could be said about Everett Transport Services. n
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