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Used truck dealer Trucks2Go has diversified into specialist vehicle rental, traffic management and utility sector contracts By Kevin Swallow
IT'S BEEN A STEEP learning curve for Chris Hart. Not only is he the MD of successful used truck dealership Trucks2Go, he also has two burgeoning businesses on the go: specialist vehicle hire 2Rent, and traffic management, civil engineering work and utility contractor 2Works.
Hart (pictured) is about to open a third site to keep pace with the new work for 2Works (CM14 November), which will join existing sites in Bolton and Conseil, Co Durham.
"We were renting [out] vehicles up to five years ago. After a year we decided to separate it out as another company, and that fell in line with the start of the traffic management. Businesses we were approaching were through the traffic management side and we said we also do rental, so they started to take it up," he explains. He started 2Works in 2009, along with co-director Jim Warbuton, who owns the Warrington-based J&L Commercial Vehicles used truck business. In the past 12
months, 2Works has increased its workforce from 20 people to 60 as it keeps pace with new contracts. It is set to turnover more than £4m during this financial year.
The rental fleet has increased to more than 530 assets, including vehicles and different pieces of equipment, and its annual turnover is now £3m.
By providing traffic management through 2Works, Hart is able to use 2Rent to provide additional vehicles, anything from a 26-tonne truck with a beavertail and crane, a truck with a telegraph pole rack to a Hitachi 7.5-tonne excavator.
Diversification has also led to partnerships with suppliers like Hand Engineering, for which Hart is the official distributor in the UK and Ireland for its poling bucket. The latest additions to the rental fleet are 30 Mercedes-Benz Sprinter welfare vans for the workforce. "We haven't aimed the welfare vans at being the cheapest in the market, but they are the best," he says.
Specification is strong: state-of-the-art command centre with early-warning systems, automatic frost start, on-demand water boiler, pump-out toilet discharge, LED lighting — to name a few. A hefty investment
"The welfare vans are a ilm investment. We can rent them the full package and we are also renting in vehicles from 2Rent that are manned by the traffic management personnel," he says. Business has increased through its branding exercise, but also word of mouth to the point that the businesses are being approached by utility companies. The next step has been to provide civil engineering work to contractors as part of the traffic management solution. But Hart also revealed that 2Works has picked up several utility contacts, including one for Morrison Utility Services to
maintain 70km of overhead power lines in Co Durham, and a traffic management team to go with it.
There is also more work in the pipeline, which he cannot yet reveal, but to compete with the blue-chip utility companies, 2Works and 2Rent have had to achieve proper certifications; including UK Safety Management, National Highway Sector Scheme, an approved Safecontractor, and ISO:9001 standard.
The company is being audited for two more significant ISOs: 14001 for environmental management and 18001 for information technology. The underpinning drive that has seen the business take off is simple, he says.
"You have to keep pushing forward to compete with the big companies," he says. "To get the work, you have to have these standards in place. How do you go and take business off the big boys?" Solutions, not problems
Hart traces the journey back to providing traffic management to one company that hired in vehicles from several suppliers, which asked for Hart to put in a quote. "We ended up putting in 11 vehicles for it," he explains. "People like turn-key solutions." It hasn't all been plain sailing and, as a relatively new
business emerging from a recession, the banks have been coy. "Some of the gear is so big and expensive and, with the level of borrowing we had to take on board, the only place to feed it is from Trucks2Go," says Hart.
"So you end up starving the business for cashflow to place as deposits for the next stuff going out on rent. And rental is slow burn. Where it will come good is by the end of year five, where a lot of the stuff we put on the road will be paid for," he adds. "You will either get another two or three years' hire from it, or sell as it doesn't owe you anything and that is going to fund the deposits for the next three-to-five year deals." •