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Daly into Europe

22nd July 1993, Page 33
22nd July 1993
Page 33
Page 33, 22nd July 1993 — Daly into Europe
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

Image is important to Mike Daly who refuses to admit his 60-vehicle fleet is in the haulage business and has banned the word transport when answering phone calls.

Daly Transport Services is not a I ransport company according to its founder, sharp-suited Mike Daly He insists on describing his North London operation as a specialist in "garment logistics".

Staff are instructed to answer the phone as DTS to avoid mentioning the word transport and so avoid giving the impression, as Daly puts it, that his is a business operating from a portable building.

It is true that there is more to Daly's operation than moving hanging clothes from A to B, even if it has recently spent .000,000 on 10 new high-capacity garment trailers from Montracon Tasker and five new Mercedes-Benz 1834 tractor units for runs which include Cyprus, Romania and Morocco.

Next year, the young company, founded by Daly with one vehicle in 1980, moves into its fourth generation of trailers. Again supplied by Montracon, they will be mega trailers with smaller wheels hitched to lower-built tractor units supplied by Mercedes. The effect will be to give extra height for hanging garments inside the trailer, boosting the current capacity of up to 20,000 blouses per load.

The current trailers are 13.8m in length but come within the legal limit of 13.6m because the front corners of the trailers have been rounded to reduce the turning circle and close the gap between trailer and tractor unit.

The step-frame trailers are fitted with other features specified by Daly's fleet engineer. These include Talfix slotted panelling inside the vans to accommodate garment poles and a swing-back underrun bar with a set of rollers to prevent damage to the tail end when being handled by ferry tugs.

Daly's business originally took a different direction, moving theatre props and costumes in a railed wagon. "I soon realised there is not the continuity of work We delivered all the props for Cats when it first opened but the play hasn't moved in 13 years," says Daly It was then that Daly says he "spotted an opportunity" to run a third-party operation in the fashion industry which was rapidly moving to central warehousing. It helped that he had a railed trailer. "There was a big growth in the primary bulk movement of goods, mostly under nominated-carrier schemes," explains Daly.

In practice, a retailer appointed a haulier for collection and delivery to a central warehouse rather than several suppliers delivering direct. From the warehouse, most retailers then set up a secondary distribution system run by the likes of Exel Logistics or TBG.

TWO SITES

Daly saw the value of having his own warehousing and now has two sites 15,000m2 in I Iornsey, North London and a 2,800m2 site which opened in Manchester this month. The fleet comprises 50 vehicles in London, five in Manchester and three at outbases in Leeds and Glasgow.

For a company that is not a transport company, Daly does a good impression of being an international haulier with between six and 20 vehicles going abroad each week depending on the time of year. It brings in brand-name garments from Italy, Germany and Denmark and also delivers into Europe for newly expanding retailers such as Sears and Burtons which are opening outlets in Germany and Spain. It carries 10 million garments a year on to the Continent.

Other runs arise out of a practice known in the clothing trade as offshore CMT production. CMT, or cut, mark and trim, means that a retailer buys fabric and sends it to a destination where the machinists' labour is cheap. The finished clothing is then brought back into the UK for retail.

Greece, Cyprus and Turkey were popular sources of cheap labour in the 1980s but an upsurge in tourism has led to higher wages. The retailers have turned to exploiting the low-wage economies of the former Eastern Bloc countries and North Africa. "A skilled machinist in Morocco will earn £25 a week compared to £200 in the UK," reckons Daly.

Despite running a fleet that is by no means small, with high-capacity trailers, only 40% of Daly's income comes from transport. The bulk is from warehousing and pre-retailing including price ticketing, shirt folding and packaging.

Shirts are pressed by a machine that can remove creases at the rate of 1,200 garments an hour and hung in plastic. An in-house laboratory tests fabrics for colour fastness and shrinkage and retailers are advised on garment care instructions to issue when the product is sold in the high street.

METAL SCANNING

Imported garments, particularly childrens' wear, are scanned by a metal detector to pick up broken sewing needles which the manufacturer has neglected to remove. Stitches per inch are measured to provide quality assurance for retailers aiming to match the standards of Marks & Spencer. "We provide every service except manufacturing the garments," says Daly.

The business has its peaks and troughs with a lot of activity in August before the new retailing season in the autumn. But it is becoming more evenly spread with retailers educating buyers to stagger orders to prevent snarl-ups at warehouses.

Daly employs 200 employees, including about 60 drivers. The operation has remained faithful to Mercedes-Benz tractor units, although this could change. A Volvo has joined the fleet on trial and is proving less thirsty than the German counterparts.

However, Daly has valued a good relationship with a local Mercedes dealer which pays to send Daly's mechanics on courses. And there is another factor: "The theft or hijacking of loads is a constant threat so we worry about vehicles breaking down," explains Daly, who believes Mercedes-Benz has a high reliability factor.

Security is further enhanced by a two-way radio and a panic button linked to a loud alarm in every cab. The company is also looking at installing a vehicle tracking system which will make it possible to talk to the drivers wherever they are.

Daly turns over £7m a year and laughs when asked how much of that is profit: "We made good money in the mid-eighties but the nineties have been tough," admits the man who is not in transport. "Logistics—its a corny word, but it's what we do," he reminds us as he bounds away to greet a customer who has just arrived.

El by Patric Cunnane

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Locations: Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow, London

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