BRS restructures
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A MAJOR restructure is on the way in October for British Road Services, as the National Freight Consortium adapts to its privatised state. The present six companies are being amalgamated into four larger ones.
The North Western and North Eastern subsidiaries, which already share the services of managing director Ron Fortune, will be merged from October 1 into one company, Northern BRS, based at Harrogate.
NWBRS's Manchester headquarters will be closed, but attempts are being made to find alternative employment for its staff either within BRS or in other NFC companies. The company acknowledges, however, that as many of its administrative staff are married women, it may be difficult to avoid redundancies.
A plan to move the Manchester office staff to suburban premises at Old Trafford (CM, June 11) was concelled at the 11th hour when it was realised that the national restructure was going ahead.
A similar merger will result in a new Midlands BRS company being formed from the existing company and the Midlands area of Eastern BRS. It will be run from Derby by Eastern managing director Robbie Burns, and the Midlands headquarters at Oxford will be closed.
Staff at Oxford are being offered similar relocation terms to those at Manchester.
The present Midlands BRS managing director, Allan McPherson, will become a director and area general manager at the company, but he is being given a national role as the toplevel link with customers in the automotive and allied industries.
According to BRS, there are as yet confidential plans to develop MBRS's share of the motor parts distribution business, and to improve the distribution services available to the industry.
Southern BRS, still managed by John Farrant, is to take over Eastern BRS's operations in East Anglia, while Western BRS, managed from Bristol by Ron Irons, will take over the Gloucester, Hereford and Worcester operations of Midlands BRS.
A company told CM that the changes represented a "natural progression" for BRS, and group managing director Geoff Pygall said: "We are making these changes as part of a continuing response to the process of change in the road transport and distribution industries.
"This has resulted in the introduction by BRS in recent years of more sophisticated services such as fleet management, contract hire, physical distribution, truck rental and a range of membership services by which we have greatly reduced our dependence on road haulage."
Mr Pygall added that the development of the motorway network and the growth in computer use had altered trading patterns.
Last year, BRS was NFC's top profit earner. In the seven months trading to October 2 last year, it returned a £7.2m trading profit on turnover of £100.7m.