BI'FORD'S
Page 64
Page 65
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
NANZA
Since 1972 Geoff Byford's fleet has grown from a Transit to 30 trucks. His company is also part of an international marketing consortium and runs a lucrative accessories business.
• For a national road distributor, delivering to remote parts of the country can be as much of a pain as it is for a rural manufacturer to find a local haulier able to cope with UK-wide journeys. Bury St Edmunds-based Byfords Cargo Express reckons it can offer a service to both.
Managing director Geoff Byford founded the company in 1972 with one Transit van; now he turns over £1.75 million.
Byfords, which also has the ANC parcels franchise for Bury St Edmunds, handles East Anglian deliveries for large groups such as clothing chain Next and confectionery giant Barker ez Dobson (a deal it won this year). It distributes nationally for local firms such as health foods manufacturer Trustin Foods.
The company has a customer base of 300, half of them national firms, and is seeking three managers to cope with a 47% growth in two years. Byford says the business is now too big for him to run on his own, with 51 staff and a fleet of 30 trucks; "Growing pains become evident. When you start with a small company, you're the guy who's in charge of the lot. Then it's like a move from the fourth to the third division. You have to put teams to work, rather than rely on solo players."
QUALITY OF SERVICE
He finds that large hauliers and ownaccount distributors are attracted to Byfords because it has always sold itself on quality of service, and it is one of only a few operators offering a daily service throughout East Anglia. It has won many customers since it first took a stand at London's Transport and Distribution Services Show two years ago.
"With the growth in regional distribution centres, it is uneconomic for a manufacturer or wholesaler to run into East Anglia," says Byford. "Hauliers use us too. Great Yarmouth is 75 miles, or twoand-a-half hours away. If you've got two pallets to deliver, it's cheaper to come to us, because we're going there every day anyway."
Volume of business from all its local customers makes it pay to trunk to major cities around the UK, he says. The company has specialised in foods distribution since it won business with Trustin, its oldest customer. The deal is worth £250,000 a year and it has three vehicles dedicated to the manufacturer. "We've grown with them," says Byford.
He set up his company after ditching a job as a sales rep, which he hated, to become a long-distance van driver. But his first venture into business was at 17, when he bought a taxi. He later passed it on to his father who had been made redundant. "Instead of the usual fatherleaves-business-to-son situation, we did it the other way round."
With the van firm, Byford wanted to exploit the fledgling consignments market. 'The urgency of overnight parcels was only just being realised," he says. Soon he and a partner were moving parcels by day, and fruit to London's Covent Garden by night.
A venture into articulated haulage in the early 1980s, with four tractive units and trailers based at Felixstowe, came to nothing, but the company grew, moving from vans to 7.5 and 10-tonners. In 1985, by which time it had a fleet of 17, it bought a local haulier, Nairdra Transport, which had a contract with the Milk Marketing Board.
It runs two depots: a head office at Bury and a maintenance base at its former HQ in Barrow. It also has warehousing space in Barrow, but fast-moving items are kept at Bury after being trunked there by customers or by Byfords' own trucks.
Its fleet now consists of 14 Scania 17tonne curtainsiders, one Scania tractive unit and two trailers, and Mercedes and Leyland Daf 12.5, 10 and 7.5-tonners. But Scanias are the most popular with Byford. "If Scania did a downward range, we would buy all one marque," he says.
Byfords is a member of Stockeurop, a marketing consortium of seven UK hauliers. This has just gone through an organisational shake-up following the semiretirement of its founder, Jim Fearnley. Byfords and its fellow members, which include Bibby Line and Irish distributor Blueflite, now own Stockeurop between them.
The consortium, started in 1972, is to market itself more aggresively and has appointed a sales and marketing director, Bill Hill from Bibby. Byfords, which owns 15%, and the other members pay the group a commission for every piece of business won by Stockeurop and sent their way.
Stockeurop has links with other consortia on the Continent and this has led to Byfords being given work from French mineral water supplier Evian and from the United States through Felixstowe. "It's an idea that's years ahead of its time with 1992 coming up," says Byford.
"Member companies vary in size and every country has its own version of Stockeurop, although it's only this year that companies have taken up equity. The best way to make an idea work is to make people part with money. Now, when Bibby gets a El million contract, we benefit from having shares through dividends."
ANC FRANCHISE
Another important arm of Byford's business is the ANC franchise, which the company has held since 1982 when the ANC network was being set up. It now represents over a third of its turnover and is kept separate from the rest of Byford's operation, with its own phones, office, uniformed drivers and six 7.5-tonne liveried vans.
Byfords paid a one-off fee for the franchise and keeps a third of the retail pri,ce of any parcel it handles (ANC and the carrier handling the collecting or delivering at the other end keep the rest). The franchisor, which has been buying back some of its troubled agents, has 60 depots and a hub near Stoke.
The company has used computers since 1976 and now runs a 275,000 Roadrunner system, which Byford is just adapting to cope with the operations side of the business. The stumbling block is coming up with a programme which can link the freight and parcels side, he says.
Two other revenue earners for Byford are a truck accessories firm and a Canadian Western Star tractive unit which he bought last year for 234,000 and uses for promotional and charity work.
Although the 10-tonne, four-axle tractor is mainly a hobby, entering it in truck shows gives the company publicity, he says. Byford, who has also taken part in a. Great Ormond Street childrens hospital money-earner with the truck, bought it because he "wanted something different — and people think American trucks cost more than they do."
ACCESSORIES
He has run the truck accessories company, CDC, since 1973, importing steel bumpers, wheel trims and cab flags. He sells the accessories at events like Truckfest where his converted 12.2-metre trailer shop can raise 222,000 over two days. The business makes 2400,000 a year.
Making trucks look individual and attractive has always been popular with Continentals, says Byford, and now the trend is catching on here, especially among owner-operators keen to give their business an image apart from their rivals. I=1 by Murdo Morrison