t's not likely that the average shopper weighing out a
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pound of fresh mushrooms in a supermarket in southern England will wonder how they got there. Ifs even less likely that they will imagine grown men suffering sleepless nights as they sweat over hot telephones trying to find transport for these delicate orbs while gales rage in the Irish Sea. But such was the scene one week in the middle of last month.
High winds disabled a P&O ferry by pushing it into the ramp at Cairnryan. just outside Stranraer. As the storm raged, hauliers and producers in Northern Ireland feared that they would be unable to get their goods to the English and Continental markets.
Jim McMullan, boss of McMullan Transport at Ballymoney, worked alongside his customer, Mourne Mushrooms, to find a ship with spare capacity. As trucks queued at Belfast and Larne, the situation threatened to turn chaotic. In the end, luck prevailed: We got on to one of the first Stena ships out of Belfast," says McMullan, We got the first load of mushrooms out of Northern Ireland and they fetched a good price at market so everyone was happy." Failure to get the truck away would have led to a shortage of mushrooms on the market next day and a glut the following day.
Storms don't happen every night but even in these extreme circumstances ifs vital that McMullan gets the mushrooms to his customers on time. The contract represents half his work but it's even more important than that—Mourne Mushrooms is actually contracted to traileronly operation, Interland Transport, for which McMullan provides traction. And he also provides traction for an important retail contract—Interland is subcontracted by Bibby Distribution at Scunthorpe to supply grocery outlets for MA Today and Costcutters within Northern Ireland.
McMullan carries out this service as a multi-drop operation, picking up Bibby's trailers when they reach Ireland or backloading them in from England. He is. however, proudest of the logistics operation that has enabled him to get fresh mushrooms from Northern Ireland to shops in southern England within a day of picking.
So how is it done within legal driving hours? A combination of double-manning and trailer switching is the tricky secret. Three loads a day are dispatched—to Scotland, northern and southern England. The mushrooms are picked in the early hours of the morning, graded, processed, packed and loaded on to McMullan's trucks by 13.00hrs in time to catch the15.301us sailing at Lame.
The load bound for the South arrives in Carlisle at 20.00hrs where the driver switches trailers and heads hack to Ireland with a backload, possibly for Costcutters or NISA. A double-manned unit picks up the mushroom trailer and heads south to Birmingham where the drivers swap duties and head further south. Within a few hours oblivious shoppers can start tucking into fresh Irish mushrooms on toast.
It's a six-day-a-week routine: We put a new Volvo on that job every year," says McMullan. But doesn't he worry about being too dependent on one customer? He shakes his head: "I feel secure that while I give Moume Mushrooms this level of service I will be their sole haulier. You 're better with that than speculating on a bit of work here, a bit there."
However, there are one or two clouds on the horizon. Like everyone CM spoke to, he regrets the ending of the IRA ceasefire last year but believes that, in time, the peace process will come good. "In this country we would just like to get on with our work."
The BSE crisis affects hauliers more directly, with former meat carriers trying to find work for empty trailers.
McMullan takes a stoical approach: if you're going to do a job, give it your best shot. Then you don't open the door for someone to take it off you."