PERRY'S COURIERS & DELIVERY SERVICE
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sitting in the heart of what was once Sheffield's prime industrial area, Perry's represents the service industry which now flourishes where once steel was king. However, the timed-delivery specialist's portfolio Includes the carriage (and packing) of cutlery for one of the city's major producers. By way of contrast, the company also handles stock for a multinational computer company.
And as nominated carrier for John Lewis, Perry's also carries large amounts of retail-ready goods.
As Allan Perry, a partner in the company with his wife Pam, explains, the case for cost-effective operation Is just as strong at 3.5 tonnes as it is at 44.
"The fleet is leased on a 12 months' or mileage basis, and we change vehicles this regularly for reasons of cost and appearance," he says. "The vans are all valeted every weekend, too, as the appearance of vehicles and drivers is of prime importance. Every day we see other people turn up in battered old vehicles: what does that say to the customers about the care you take with their deliveries?"
All the company's drivers are uniformed, and the annual mileage of 17,000 miles means the vehicles always look good. "it works in our favour: not only do we have relatively new vehicles in the fleet, but we get a good lease rate as we always return low-mileage, well-cared-for vehicles with a good resale value," Perry tells CM.
However, if you think that 3.5 tanners are cheap enough to run that they can flit about part loaded, Perry has news for you: "We rarely run part loaded. Obviously for carriage each item has a weight, and we try to ensure that the vehicles run as near fully laden as passible for efficiency.
"We have a regular run to London every day with two vans running fully laden both ways," he adds. "Our operating radius can stretch as far as the Home Counties and the South Coast, so we have to operate return loads. Although these sometimes mean part-laden running, we avoid it as much as possible.
"We cover the country from the Sheffield base, but without running a trunking system," Perry reports. "A vehicle leaving here will do the entire journey to the customer. We don't hand work to other companies—that way we can easily monitor an item and remove any arguments should it be damaged. We are responsible for it the whole time."
With the courier driver often held up as a maverick, how does Perry view the light commercial driver and the jokes about 'white-van-man?
"We don't have any trouble," he says. The vans are clearly sign-written. We've only once had a phone call, and that was about where a van had been parked. We haven't got any of the 'How's my driving?' schemes, but we are always looking at improvements to our service.
"As a company we don't run advanced driver training schemes as such, although one of our drivers is doing advanced driving on his own behalf and we support him in this," Perry adds.
So which problems give a courier operator the biggest headaches? "The biggest problem is continually spiralling fuel costs," says Perry. "M fuel goes up initially we have to carry it, but we eventually have to pass it on to the customer. We are reviewing prices because of the budget. We buy £7O0-.80O worth of fuel a day, which may not be a lot to many hauliers, but on mainly 3,5 and 7.5tonne operations with our rates it makes quite an impact.
"The industry is very competitive," he paints out. "We know the competition has put up prices, as we get calls from their customers, but we cannot sustain It alone and have to pass it on to the customer. However, as we specialise in time-dependent deliveries our customers understand there's a cost implication in meetingguarantees."
by Ian Shaw