SURE WAY TRANSPORT
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Sureway Transport started when Rob Lloyd's mother, who worked for a printer, found getting loads shifted for lastminute jobs was !coming a headache. Lloyd was i engineer at the time but saw an Tortunity, so he bought a Ford • ansit and started doing jobs for .e company his mother worked r. Soon he expanded into a secid and third van and the fleet .ew into 7.5-tonners and eventuly into artics. The move from igineering to transport seemed itural, as his father had been in iulage before him.
Lloyd developed the business by .opping cards through the doors prospective customers and am cultivating contacts with his isting customers. At first it was .ostly same-day work for prints—a notoriously last-minute dustry. Now he hardly ever
works for printers, concentrating instead on general haulage and palletised distribution.
The growth mainly took place in the early 199 OS. Being based at Hambrook, on the northern edge of Bristol, Sureway is well placed to pick up work in the aircraft industry. He stared running vans into a local aircraft works on other jobs and was approached by the company to move aircraft parts from some of its other sites around the country. This needed bigger vehicles so he made the move up to 17-tonners.
Aircraft parts
As well as aircraft parts Sureway's main work entails toiletries, industrial plastics and merchandising equipment. He also subcontracts for a freight forwarder based in Avonmouth.
"We are incredibly busy," says Lloyd, who believes in presenting a professional image. "We run a modern fleet, have uniformed drivers and have a three-year replacement policy on the vehicles."
Although Lloyd started out in engineering he always hankered after a job in transport. "When my parents asked me what I wanted to do I didn't like to say I wanted to be a lorry driver," he says. "It was a dying industry then," His father was a driver for BRS and the young Lloyd used to spend his school holidays sitting with him in the cab. "I have always enjoyed driving," he adds, but the pressures in the office prevent him from getting behind the wheel as often as he would like.
Maintenance is taken care of through a sister company which is based in Sureway's warehouse. Both companies run predominantly Iveco fleets so they decided to co-operate and hired a fitter between them.
Although Sureway is a general haulier, it keeps busy by combining the general work with an overnight pallet service. "We are in the Express Pallet Systems (EPS) network and by combining that with the other work we find we can keep the vehicles going all of the time. We never have a dull spot," says Lloyd. If we have an increase on the general work we can always stand down the pallets to economy freight for the following day. By mixing them we keep all the drivers busy all of the time."
Sureway offers an overnight pallet distribution service for customers in the Bristol area. Nightly trunks are made to the central EPS hub in Birmingham where trucks collect local freight for distribution in Bristol.
"As much as we can we try to keep the freight on our own vehicles because we like to keep control of it," says Lloyd. "But when you are offered a next-day pallet to Newcastle upon Tyne for £40 and you're not going in that direction, that's when the pallet system comes into its own!"
Freehold site
With business buoyant Lloyd plans to move to a freehold site next year. "We are coming into the fifth year of a five-year lease on the warehouse," he explains. "We don't want to spend another five years paying the landlord £200,000 a year. We've got healthy figures on the books and the bank has agreed to back us on freehold premises." Lloyd has his eye on a piece of land about a mile from his present base.
"We know we are not the cheapest in the market but we like to think we are one of the best at what we do," he concludes. "We run a modern, efficient fleet and at the end of the day we are returning good profits. We are not downbeat, we are not looking to get out and sell up. We are looking to still be here in 15 years' time at least."