BARNE1T & GRAHAM
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PEN RITH
SPECIALTY: Bulk loads Former busdriver, turned haulier and truck dealer, Arthur Hewetson gazes admiringly at the Cumbrian mountains behind his Penrith depot: "That's the loveliest view in the lake district—it changes every 10 minutes," he says, referring to the way shifting clouds filter the light falling across the hills. The picturesque setting doesn't alter the fact that Hewetson's haulage company, Barnett & Graham, has found the recent going tough: "During the past three years there's been a lot of bad debt, a lot of hauliers have gone out of business," he says,"but people still want their jobs done for nothing. You have to be strong enough to stand back and say, sorry, I cannot do it at that price."
The company turns over £5.5m a M6, acts as a staging post for loads travelling north to Scotland or to the South. As a result other operators sub work to Barnett & Graham to avoid paying for drivers' nights out.
The company is best known for bulk loads whether it is limestone, coal or animal feed transported by its own fleet of 30 vehicles or or one of several owner drivers. It carries open cast coal from West Cumberland to Broughton Moor for British Coal and limestone from British Steel's quarry at Shap to production centres at Newport, Scunthorpe, Sheffield and Teesport.
At one time the company had an intensive contract sending truckloads of limestone every hour from Shop to the steel works at Ravenscraig—the loads were required daily, all year round, with the exception of New Year's Day. The shutting of Ravenscraig had "quite an impact" recalls Hewetson, "but you have to look somewhere else."
That "somewhere else" includes a general haulage portfolio of soft drinks for Cadbury Schweppes and toilet rolls, tyres, fertiliser and plasterboard for some of Cumbria's remaining manufacturers.
Many will be unaware that Barnett & Graham through its subsidiary, Borderman Trucks, is the oldest established MAN dealer in the country— having sold the Germanmade trucks in the NorthWest since 1975.
Now the dealership has depots in Penrith and Carlisle selling 50 to 60 units a year and offering full maintenance and service back up. At first other hauliers were unwilling to buy vehicles from a competitor and there are still some who won't buy from Borderman for that reason. "The prejudice was pretty plain at the start but it's not so bad now," says Hewetson, who sold four trucks to Curries in July. Barnett & Graham's own fleet is predictably exclusively MAN: "How would it look if we ran Fodens while Borderman is trying to sell MANs?" Most B&G owner-drivers also run MANs although they are not compelled to: "I put it to them this way," explains Hewetson, "we should be able to give them a better deal on parts and service than anyone else." Until forming Barnett & Graham in 1964 and the since bought-out Barnett, Hewetson worked first as a bus conductor and then as a bus driver in Carlisle—he still has his PSV. But why does his name not form part of the company's moniker? "I had another job when we started," he explains, "and once we were established it made sense to leave it at Barnett & Graham." What's in a name after all?