D ickie Curran plans to retire at 40—which g ives him
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about 18 months to find someone to run the shop while he spends more ') r\ \ I ('' r r.l time on the golf course or flying his helicopter. Not bad for a boy 1L-3i J J .inj from a council estate who bought his first HGV as an unemployed 21 J i (1 9 i \ til I year-old and got someone else to drive it while he went on honeymoon. The King of Cool explains: "We had a couple of dealers in Bangor 1)9 Y_LI\J that allowed you to get going. They would take a deposit that did not exist and give you a lorry—I bought a Volvo for £6,500 which meant I owed some finance company L11,000." Returning from honeymoon he picked up a second vehicle—L900 of ex-carpet carrying Leyland—and a business was born. He now has 11 tractor units "and a new Scania arriving this morning". The firm has been running 13.6m trailers since 1989 and this year began operating one of the first low-height Volvo FH tractors to be sold in the UK The two-axle PH420 hauls a triaxle curtainsider with a 2.9m loading height within the 4.2m height limit. Curran says the additional load capacity has won him work delivering bulk loads of plastic products from Ireland to England. The need to cross the Irish sea dictates standards: "The Irish were the first with European lorries—you'll get a guy with a farm and a couple of trucks, yet he's doing two loads a week into Rome." One of Curran's main customers is Corriboard, which makes a material used for advertising posters by London Underground: four of his trucks run in a joint Corriboard/Curran livery, Within Northern Ireland the fleet distributes Continental Tyres; from Ireland it delivers raw material to British Steel in Sheffield and to a Grimsby firm that makes floor mats for use by workers on the Rover production line. The day's traffic board in Curran's office reveals that this company is the very embodiment of general haulage. Office equipment, steel, 22 tonnes of cabbage, 12 tonnes of petfood, 20 tonnes of truck tyres, 30 rolls of cloth, two pallets of plastic, one truck engine, W tonnes of paper rolls, granules for Shell Chemicals...all these and more are going to find themselves on a Curran truck before the day is out. With peace breaking out Curran anticipates more traffic, more people travelling through the province, perhaps an increase in work if the tourist industry prospers. Perversely, the flavour of competition may change: "Most of our business has been built up because of the troubles," he says. "English companies didn't want to set up here." The events of the last several years forced Curran to remove any reference to Ireland from the side of his lorries: "On the A580 from Manchester to Liverpool the Irish trucks were persecuted," he says. "We took Bangor, County Down, Northern Ireland off the side because it was a magnet for police. You can imagine a driver parking up in a London street with that on." Only the phone numbers remain to allow potential customers to contact the firm, This should not imply that the enforcement agencies are not active on Curran's home ground. The Department of Environment's Road Traffic Licensing Branch has recently stopped several Curran vehicles in local spot checks.The DoE is responsible for issuing 0 licences in the province, with the singular difference from the mainland that the operator does not have to state how many vehicles the application covers. "You get visited by the DoE to make sure your property is big enough," explains Curran. Like the other hauliers we met in Northern Ireland Curran has not yet been the direct beneficiary of regional aid, although the heralded bonanza of EC and even
American funding the peace dividend—is bound to feed through to hauliers as extra loads if manufacturing is boosted.
In the meantime, Curran has benefited from the six counties' attempt to promote its industry as an alternative to its angst, carrying exhibition materials for the Industrial Development Board down to the South of France and back.
Whether the IDB has picked up new customers as well as a suntan, only time will tell.