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136 
BENNIE'S BACKYARD BOOM
Page 50
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The rapid growth of Northampton, and the current M40 extension, have meant work on the doorstep for East Midland quarrier and aggregates carrier Peter Bennie. • There has always been business in the thriving Northampton area for aggregates haulier Peter Bennie.
The company has just added five 38tonne Volvo FL10/Multidrive artics to its all-Volvo fleet of 50 eight-wheel 30tonners, and it is expanding its Brackmills Haulage third-party plant movement division which now includes a roadsweeper hire operation, Bennie Hire.
Brackmills, named after the Northampton industrial estate where the firm's offices are, already runs a dedicated plant and machinery parts distribution service for Volvo, and its low loaders carry plant for several of Bennie's quarrying competitors which do not want a rival's livery on site: Bennie's trucks are yellow, but Brackmills' vehicles carry the blue and white Volvo colours.
The division was established when Bennie decided to buy heavy haulage lorries to move its bulldozers and stone-crushing machines from quarry to quarry. "Before that we were using third parties and we thought we could de better ourselves," says operations manager Bob Rhead. He was recruited to develop the company's third-party haulage activities 15 years ago, when it only had two vehicles. "Now 95% of our work is for other companies."
Bennie remains firmly rooted in the Midlands, where it was founded 54 years ago as an earth moving specialist, and is owned by the son-in-law of founder Peter Bennie. Another subsidiary, based in Kettering, runs plant hire, forklift, joinery and surgical shoe companies, and also owns a fuel distribution haulier with 10 trucks on contract to Conoco.
Although the market is competitive, with rivals such as Tarmac and ARC, Rhead is confident that the East Midland construction boom, soon to be fuelled by the Al-M1 link, will continue. "We're a small company," he says. "We don't try to overstretch ourselves to work nationally," he says. "We've got more than we can cope with on our doorsteps."
Bennie's 90 drivers are all employees rather than owner-drivers. "We want to be in control," says Rhead. The company does use owner-drivers on a daily basis, usually doubling the size of its working fleet. It has also helped several of its drivers to set up for themselves and then subcontracts to them.
Bennie's quarrying and transport operations turn over 220 million (it has doubled in the past three years) and it is on course to make a £2 million profit this year, says managing director John Goodjohn. Last year, it broke the Elm profit barrier for the first time, mostly due to the M40 and the success of its roadsweeper hire.
Goodjohn now wants to push for more contract work — over 90% of the operation's business is currently catch trade — and he is also examining moving into waste management.
DEDICATED OPERATION
Bracknulls runs five 1.14s on its dedicated operation for Volvo from the manufacturer's Dwcford factory to about six locations nationwide, but it also has 25 Volvo tractors, all plated to 150 tonnes. The aggregates haulage operation is also run as a separate department, which has to compete with other contractors for Bennie's quarry work, says Rhead.
He explains why the company's fleet is almost exclusively Volvo: "On the heavy haulage side our biggest customer is Volvo because we move all their machines. On the tipping side, we've found that Volvo has been the cheapest vehicle to operate because its residual values are so good. They are also reliable, we can get parts, and the drivers like driving them."
Nonetheless, Rhead always has "something else in the fleet". At the moment, it is a Leyland Daf Constructor eight wheeler. "This keeps a check on ourselves. We don't close our eyes to what we could be buying," he says.
Brackmills' four new Multidrives join the one it had on longterm evaluation from Volvo. Plated at 38 tonnes they will haul payloads of 23.5 tonnes—four tonnes more than its rigid eight-wheelersoperating from quarries at Banbury, Corby and Northampton (CM 9-15 February). It has also extended its fleet of 10 mobile stone-crushers by four. The company's customers are split between building contractors and road builders.
The Bennie Hire roadsweeper operation was "developed from our own needs", says Rhead. Environmental pressures on construction companies to clean up after them have meant rising demand for the vehicles. Bennies uses them for a few hours a week, but most of the time they are hired out with Bennie drivers to house and road builders. A sixth Volvo FL6 with Shelvoke Dempster body has just been added to the fleet.
Bennies turned to quarrying in the 1960s when it split into a quarrying and haulage ann, based in Northampton, and a division covering its other activities, which is still at its original Kettering base.
The company almost folded in 1968, says Goodjohn, just three years after being taken over by present chairman Roger Toseland. Northampton's boom, when the town's population doubled to well over 200,000, also revived Bennies' fortunes. When the city's development programme began, Bennie was the only nearby quarry company and it meant steady work.
Goodjohn says it pays to keep its divisions, such as Brackmills, separate. "If a competitor, like ARC, does not want a Bennie vehicle on site they can use a Brackmills truck, which is in different colours. It's called not telling the right hand what the left is doing," he says.
El by Murdo Morrison