PETE OSBORNE LOGISTICS
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Speaking to Peter Osborne restores your faith in the future of Britain's transport industry. Well, perhaps that's going a bit too far; but there's no doubt that Barnsley-based Pete Osborne Transport & Logistics is a success story that sets a fine example to other hauliers.
Road haulage is in Osbome's blood. His father ran a haulage firm, based in Rotherham but the company he runs now is entirely his own.
When Osborne left school—where he says he "did nothing but mess about"—he got a job as a farm labourer. "I went on the farm because I loved all kinds of machinery," he says. But it proved a disappointment: "I was paid about £25 a week and every Friday we had to sweep this massive yard by hand. I hated every minute of it."
He left to take a job on the loading bays for a large bakery and confectionery manufacturer. But his love of vehicles prompted him to get his Class One licence and find a driving job, with Watts Bros of Beverley.
He was married by the age of 20 and, when he left Watts in 1990, it was to start his own business, in Bamsley, with his wife, Melanie, who had also secured her Class One qualification. "We sold our car and bought a W-reg F12 for £7,500," says Osborne. It was tough, and money was tight, but the Osbomes hung on. Osborne knew that building up a haulage business was going to be a long, hard slog.
"All the signs were that the transport industry was going to struggle, and in fact we weren't doing too well ourselves," he says. "I knew we had to get into something else."
Osborne found a 37orn2 warehouse which he used to supplement the haulage income. "Three years later, I sold it for a good profit and that helped tremendously," he reports. His next warehouse was to set the pattern for the company's rapid growth: "I found a 2,800m2 warehouse which was empty...I was already doing transport for a glass manufacturer that needed warehousing facilities, so I said to Alan Findlay [the warehouse owner] if I can fill that warehouse, will you lease it to me?" Both men took the risk, and the glass firm obligingly filled the building.
Fifteen months later, Osborne heard Findlay lamenting the fact that a tenant of his, who occupied a 4,65om2 warehouse on a 6.5-acre site, had gone bust: "So I said to him again—more as a joke than anything else — 'if I can fill it, can I have the building?' And Alan said yes again." This time, confectionery giant Trebor Bassett filled the warehouse for Osborne. They have been there now for three years and have just renewed the agreement for another two years. "From then on, we just kept repeating the pattern," says Osborne.
Today, Pete Osborne Logistics runs a fleet of 30 vehicles, has 6o,000m2 of warehousing on four sites and employs 8o people, about half of them drivers. The company's rate of growth shows no sign of slowing: it has just signed a deal with furniture giant Ikea, which now occupies 23,000m2 of Osborne warehousing.
Osborne describes with some satisfaction visiting the farm where he once worked and parking his new Mercedes in the same huge yard that he once had to sweep. "They just can't understand how I've done it", he says. He is dearly just as surprised by his success as his former workmates and employers on the farm. "I've got such a passion for my job, I just keep on at it," he concludes. "But I often find it really hard to appreciate how far we've come."
• by David Taylor