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The Small Operator: 5
Page 88
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THE HAULAGE INDUSTRY, in common with most others, has its giants, but 85 per cent of all hauliers have five vehicles or less. Many concerns are one-man businesses to whom profit and loss are very real everyday terms. In this series COMMERCIAL MOTOR gives small hauliers an opportunity to talk about their businesses and themselves.
By E. James Millen
WILLIAM BROWN runs a fleet of 12 vehicles. He also farms 30 acres of land, growing fruit and vegetables. He took over the business from his father in 1930, though he has been running it since he left school.
Not all that long ago, about the year 1945, Mr. Brown had been working twice as much land. But as industry in the area developed and road haulage grew he found himself devoting more and more time to running his vehicles and rather less to managing his land.
At that time he had five vehicles on B licence. Finding it impossible to devote sufficient time to his 60 acres, he decided to let half of it.
Since 1945 additional vehicles have been acquired. There are now 11 on A and B licences and one on C.
The A-licence vehicles carry for a local fertilizer firm, agricultural merchants, building materials for Acrow Engineers, and do a good deal of dock work in Portsmouth and Southampton.
Six tippers on B licence do a large amount of roadmaking work for William Press: these sixand seven-yard tippers deliver large quantities of ballast and gravel with payment on an hourly basis.
Various makes Mr. Brown certainly has no allegiance to any one vehicle manufacturer: the tippers include Fords, Commers and a Bedford. The C-licence vehicle, also a tipper, is a Commer which carries Mr. Brown's own gravel, ashes, and so on.
Two of the four A-licence vehicles are long-wheelbase, 20ft flats which carry general goods over a 20-mile radius and fertilizers up to 100 miles. Two arties are now used—Taskers hauled by a Seddon 13:4 (roughly a year old) and a six-monthold Commer CC15.
Mr. Brown employs 10 drivers, a full-time fitter and a part-time secretary. He starts work at 6 o'clock each morning and his working day finishes "anytime at night".
Of drivers, he says: "I must have a driver who can find a load when needed, a man who can be relied upon to phone a clearing house.
"We are not always certain of getting a return load, but a driver must try hard at various points on the return journey. When I send a vehicle up to Manchester the driver usually has to find his own load home— though where possible we try to lay on a return load of fertilizer from Middlesbrough."
His experience with drivers has been happy—as he put it: "Most of mine have been with me for a long time; one man has just retired after 50 years."
Frustrations Mr. Brown speaks with no little feeling on the "frustrations" he meets in his business. "A man who can stick haulage today must be a very fit man," he says.
"He must be prepared to put up with dock delays and resigned to being woken up in the middle of the night with the news that his lorry with its load of tomatoes is upside down on a lonely road miles from anywhere."
Delays in loading and unloading are patently a very sore point.
"We experience so many delays in loading. There are great delays with fruit— sometimes it will take a day to pick up a load from Southampton Docks."
But it is not only at the docks that this type of difficulty is met—it happens at factories, too.
"It's infuriating when you get to a factory at 3 p.m. on a Friday and are told that they won't unload the vehicle—which has to stand where it is until Monday morning."
Despite difficulties and frustrations, however, William Brown's business is doing quite nicely. "Turnover has been up every year over the past six years—early last year I had to hire eight or 10 tippers a day to cope with the work.
Help each other "It's sometimes difficult to find someone to help you out, although hauliers in this area do try their hardest to help each other.
"I hire out vehicles from time to time— most of us have our own pet customers. I am waiting for my latest turnover figures, but I'm hoping to see a big difference from using the two artics."
Yet all in the garden is far from rosy. "Having to spend something like £3,700 on an artic, you never get a chance to save any money—there are many overheads and not enough recompense. You must have a good deal of capital, but there are delays in getting your money in. I often have to wait three to four months for payment."
The future?
I asked Mr. Brown about his plans for the future: "I'm looking forward to someone coming along to buy me out. If I sell I suppose I shall have to sell the whole of the property."
The property consists of a pleasant modernized house, adjacent to the firm's office, and a large vehicles yard which boasts several dery pumps.
On four acres of land belonging to Mr. Brown he grows strawberries and cauliflower. There are also two pig yards and a number of outbuildings.
Mr. Brown's reflections on the work of a lifetime are adequately expressed in a remark he made just before I left him: "There is no turning back—but if I'd known what I know now when I was 22, or even 32, I'd never have started. There are too many complications."