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mpire building the Schneider way
Page 13
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iert Dentressangle is an increasingly obvious presence on UK's roads. Its bright red trucks and distinctive, if lewhat unpronounceable, name seem to be everywhere ;e days—and now it has a video out too. Dominic Perry talks D's new UK MD about his plans for the UK market.
auillez conduire un camion comme • ci?" says the sticker on the back of tick and then gives a phone number. lose not fluent in French, the sticker roughly speaking: "Do you want to a truck like this?".
3 perhaps The most basic way imag; of advertising for drivers , but one 3atrIce Schneider, the new managrector at ND's UK transport operaseems to believe in, it hasn't yet ared on the back of ND's UK trucks, at could be in the pipeline. As well °kers the group's French operation plead the word via a nationwide TV Ilsing campaign.
:hneider explains: "ft was to help the get to know the human face of ND how that it is made up of 10,500 peond on the other hand it helps our 'eel as though they belong to a corn
that is recognised by the public.' icording to Schneider, it's vital to with the public, particularly with the of environmental and social legisiahat's in the pipeline, and he sees -Using as the best way to get the age across: "It's a different )ach, but the group has always been 'leer in a lot of respects, be it a techical or a marketing approach. The lising campaign is designed to build s a brand rather than to sell our port operation."
n sailing
said, it's not all been plain sailing for the UK. The company has certainly generating some publicity recently, wasn't the sort Schneider would wished for. ND became embroiled long and costly dispute with the le Inspectorate r the Eastern Area. At one stage it looked like rould lose its Eastern licence: the 'utile Inquiry simply suspended the :e for 14 days and cut its authorisey five trucks.
:hneider acknowledges that the affair was embarrassing and 4 with former MD Peter Cvetkovic ably distracted from some aspects i business I CM19-26 Sept).
:hneider is confident that systems are 1 place to prevent the same problems g again, but he believes a different iach to managing drivers is needed: in industry that is so visible, with such a bad reputation and combined with the coming driver shortaf,e, we should be doing more to train drivers about the rules ratherthan just punishing them.
"At the moment we are encouraged to sack drivers who offend, but all that happens is that they end up getting ajob with another company down the road, It does nothing to help road safety,"
The most recent ND story concerned the retirement of lorg-standing Wales and West MOs Gill anc Roger Sheddick. The pair originally ran Sheddick Transport and stayed on to manage the operation when ND snapped it up. However, there was much speculation surrounding therdepa-ture.
Consultancy
"it has been an ongoing situation for about a year," he says. "The/ expressed their wish to retire and it's normal that they would want to. They hate worked with us to find a replacement and will continue to work for us on a consultancy basis."
Schneider believes the main reason for the number of rumours circulating about ND is its success. The other, of course, is its nationality. "Your reputation always proceeds you and there is nothing better than rumours to deride sconeone and bring them down," he says. 'There are always stories circulating about us slashing rates and poaching work. But at the end of the day the group carries on increasing in size—we grew by El% last year and had a 26% growth in logistics."
With operations scattered across Western and now Eastern Europe, ND thinks of itself as a pan-European letwork. "You can forget where you are coming from and who you are but you have got to go with what your customers want and offer a pan-European service," Schneider rema-ks. "But at the same time you have to offer them regional skills as they still want to work with somebody local."
He cites ND's Wales and West operation as an example of this local feel, suggesting that if the firm only had its Manchester base, customers in the South-West would have been reluctant to deal with it: 'Simply having a base in Wales has gathered us a lot of business, 1 think people want someone close by them who they can relate to—we are Europewice, but regionally based."
ND seems to be an exception amang hauliers, with Schneider insisting that the Working Time Directive will not be a problem: 'We will follow the example of the changes we made in France, where drivers are limited to 180 hours per month. There we adapted our systems and adapted our traffic. However, it will be vital to have close communications with our customers because loading and unloading on time is going to be key. For example, we found that even the supermarkets in France had to may improvements.'
Could the WTD finally end the queues at Supermarket regional distribution centre3? "Pressure [for change] will come from haulage companies," he says. it has to, because as a business you will not be able to afford having your drivers waiting for hours and hours for loads."
The shortage of skilled drivers looks set to worsen when the WTD is impieme -ited, but Schneider promises that ND will not follow the lead of some other ma or firms by employing Eastern Bloc drivers outside its Eastern European operations: "We have no interest in just competing on price. For us to use east European drivers would only offer shortterm gain.
For instance, where is someone like Willi Betz going to get drivers from in five years? The other problem is that when you employ Eastern drivers they cannot corverse with anybody here, How can the' possibly offer a service to your cus
tomers or even solve problems?"
The UK is sometimes seen as a tough place to run any business, let alone in haulage, but Schneider doesn't think so. He points out that UK bosses have to deal with far fewer soda committees, and other workers' meetings than their Continental counterparts. In fact, he believes that the social costs on the Continent offset the UK's huge fuel tax burden.
Interference
As you may expect, Schneider will never have affection for the unions "We don't recognise unions at ND in the UK. You don't need all the unionised interference to do good work with people—we prefer to deal with them on an individual basis."
Again the conversation returns to the idea of belonging, and that's what ND seems to mean for Schneider. He's been in transport for 16 years, all but three of them with ND. 'We are really trying to hard to work with people and create an environment where people feel they belong to the company," he concludes. "I've been with them for 13 years, and when I returned it was like coming home."