A 'though he has nothing to do with meat transport, Linden
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Allen, boss of William Allen & Sons, has found his business affected by the BSE scare. The crisis has led to far fewer Irish trailers going over to England, causing a shortage of empty units looking for a backload home. "Yesterday we could not find an empty trailer," he says, "We rang about 40 hauliers from our list—when that was exhausted we went to the Yellow Pages."
Eventually they found an English haulier prepared to load in Essex on condition that they found him a return load from Ireland. He shakes his head. "You could not find an empty trailer for love or money—if you offered £100 above the rate you would not have got one. When there are plenty of trailers out there, they're ringing us all the time."
BSE aside, Allen is feeling confident enough to develop the business. He opened a sales office in Dublin in January; at sonic point a depot may follow. Later this spring he is redeveloping his headquarters in Moira to include new offices and 930m2 of transit warehousing. The current buildings are cramped and out of date: "Customers are becoming more image conscious," he notes.
It has also been important to keep an eye on where the money is to be made. At the end of the eighties the company switched from a full-load service exclusively within Ireland to a groupage service within Ireland and to the UK "We saw an opening for part loads in Ireland," he says. "It was a niche market and our hunch proved correct. Initially we used freight forwarders until we developed our own contacts—we found that the customers like a personal service."
Groupage provides higher margins: around 10% compared to 2-3% for full loads, "It pays better because there are more customers involved," explains Allen. "Once or twice a week we trunk a 40-footer to Cork. We could have anything up to 12 customers on the trailer, all paying their own rate." A daily Mercedes 1617 , to Dublin is always full; other units run down to Galway and Limerick with smaller vehicles feeding in from around Northern Ireland. "The boom in the Republic has helped— there's a lot of exports going south at the moment," he says. The reverse of this coin is that hauliers from the Republic have been tempted to venture north looking for work. What exactly does Allen carry? Ifs all dry freight. One of his contracts brings carpet from English manufacturers for distribution to Irish retailers. Another is for the distribution of tiles from an English factory throughout the province. A more specialised area is the distribution of fragile refrigeration equipment for butchers' shops and other retail outlets, At this time of year there are lawnmowers imported from America and Australia going into garden cen. tres. In the winter Allen supplies coal bags from an Ulster manufacturer to coal merchants all over Ireland. Diversity, it seems, is the key.
Allen attributes better business relationships between the Republic and Northern Ireland to the ceasefire: "We've been