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T he skies above Greater London are notoriously crowded with aeroplanes;
Page 44
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no less than five airports serve the city and one of them, Heathrow, is the busiest international airport in the world. Impressive statistics, but They equate to horrendous waits for hauliers at pick-up points.
A few weeks ago John Attwood, managing director of Feltham-based J&M Attwood, had to personally endure a long delay at Heathrow. He parked up his truck on time, but congestion at the cargo depot led to a six-hour wait. "Hauliers who think they have got it bad should come to Heathrow Airport," he says.
We enter Attwood's base and for a second we think we have stumbled across the Dutch football team's training ground: all the office staff are wearing resplendent short-sleeved orange shirts.
"Yes, we wear orange shirts and our trucks are flame red," says Attwood. Haulage has been in the Attwood family since 1920; J&M Attwood was founded in 1976 by John and his brother Mark. In 1979 Mark chose to resign from his partnership to concentrate on his first love—driving for the company John Attwood's wife Zoe Is a director. Last year the firm moved to its Feltham base from Hounslow. We moved here to enhance the business," he explains. "We wanted to get into warehousing."
Attwood dislikes the haulage buzzwords which are so prevalent nowadays:
"We tett that we wanted to offer our customers a total logistics package... a total logistics package," he repeats, as if to
emphasise the fact that he's just uttered a buzzword himself.
Like many operators Attwood sees warehousing, distribution and "total logistics" as the next big thing. He has 270m2 of warehousing space on his site.
J&M Attwood has always been located within a stone's throw of Heathrow, but the firm only got into air cargo in 1988. We thought we would try it out," he says. "I did a bit of research and learnt that there was a use for rollerbed equipment in the area."
He duly invested in this prerequisite for air cargo (for an in-depth feature on UK air cargo haulage, see CM 6-12 Sept 2001). It costs £6,000 to install a rollerbed into a curtainsider but this equipment helped the firm win business at airports including Heathrow, Stansted, Gatwick, Luton, Birmingham, East Midlands and Manchester.
The air work is an equal mixture of import and export. There are some unusual loads like live ostriches, although white goods are more commonly carried.
All drivers have Level 4 airport security training and in these troubled times staff also undergo an air cargo security course.
"We have also joined Weaver Pallet Express," says Attwood. "This enhanced our business."
We glance across at the wall r which clearly identifies a huge swath West London and north Surrey Attw HGVs pick up loads from these areas overnight trunking to Weaver's Licit hub. 'Weaver approached us and we found that this work is fitting into our o all business plan well," Attwood repc London's statistics are awesom an economy bigger than that of rr small nations and a population of 7.5 lion. It is also famous for road coni tion. Attwood describes the M25 E nightmare: "ft is a brilliant idea but not capable of carrying The volum( traffic... 16 of our trucks were stub the M25 at one time, and none of tt could get off. If there is an accidenl one of the local roads it can take as I as an hour to get to Heathrow, and only two miles away."
Attwood and his team certainly h their work cut out, but he says that effort is worth it: "The rates could better but they could also be a lot wot but the rates in air cargo are a lot be than in general haulage."