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SPANISH
Page 36
Page 37
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RITE
Arts International, which specialises in removals to Spain, as become the first remover in the UK to replace its traditional vehicles with Philips-concept swap-body drawbars...
• Taking on the first Philips-concept demountable drawbar trucks in the UK removals industry has allowed Sussex-based Arts International to boost the size of its loads by over 10% and to introduce instant turnaround on its trips to Spain.
Managing director Arthur Rayner has spent 2200,000 on a pair of MAN five-axle F90 FNLs with six 8.05m demountable bodies.
He thinks his may be the first removals firm in Europe to use the system, designed by the Dutch electrical giant for its distribution operation and unveiled at the Amsterdam Show two years ago.
Arts, which has been specialising in runs to Spain since Rayner and his brother set up the company in 1982, took the vehicles on this month. They replace two Mercedes artics and a drawbar.
Two of the six demountable bodies will be loaded and brought to Arts' Burgess Hill depot while the new vehicles are abroad, using a third truck. This will probably be one of its existing tractive units, which will be stretched to a rigid chassis. 'Rayner hopes to buy a third Philipsconcept MAN before the summer.
RAILWAY
He says that the demounts will allow the Spanish operation to run to "railway timetables". Each trip will be kept to a fortnight maximum.
Two drivers will work permanently on Spain, with a third collecting loads in the UK, delivering return consignments and providing relief cover.
In the time taken to make 18 roundtrips with the old vehicles, Arts' new drawbars will do 24. Turnarounds at the warehouse, which used to take two or three days, are now immediate.
"It puts us on our toes," admits Rayner, "but it allows us to predict a schedule. There will be no room for being woolly."
All the MANs are left-hand drive. Extra men are taken on in Spain for unloading: Rayner recruits these through a Spanish agent.
The Philips system will release warehouse space too as fewer items will need to be stored, and it will solve access problems in Spain, as either body can be taken singly on the front chassis, with the other left behind on the trailer.
Getting to some houses with an artic or non-demountable drawbar is difficult, says Rayner, whose customers include expatriates and second-home owners in Andorra, the Costas and Balearics (Majorca, Minorca and Ibiza).
If the first load to be dropped is on the drawbar trailer, the whole unit has to make the trip.
The Philips bodies are 3m-high internal ly, by 2.44m wide and 8.05m long. With a shorter cab and close coupling they can carry 11% more than most drawbar units, which is a boon for a removals company like Arts, which tends to bulk-out before it reaches even the 32.5-tonne UK weight limit (continental drawbars have a 35tonne limit).
Rayner describes their cost — which includes signwriting in the firm's new livery — as "phenomenal for two vehicles; it has doubled our financial commitments". But he believes they will pay for themselves within a year.
He had the choice of losing customers or coming up with a new operating method which would allow bigger loads to be delivered faster.
He will sell two of his existing trucks to help pay for the MANs.
Rayner read about the Philips-concept in a Commercial Motor roadtest on a Brit European Transport MAN which had the system fitted (CM 20 October 1988) and
approached MAN at the Frankfurt Motor Show soon after. He felt that the Munich manufacturer was the "most sophisticated maker of trucks designed to use the Philips equipment". First he looked at an F8 with an underfloor engine, similar to the one being used by Brit European.
Although more expensive, it has the advantage of being quieter and having a lower centre of gravity over the drive axle. Rayner decided against it because he thought the underfloor engine, while fine on motorways, might be vulnerable on rocky Spanish roads.
His F90s have conventionally sited engines. Their trailer chassis are made by a Dutch company, Krone; the bodies by Saxon in Bedford and the base-frames by Ray Smith. They are air-suspended.
TRAINING
Ile plans to give his drivers training in the left-hand-drive MANs, which have Eaton Twin Splitter gearboxes. The previous trucks were right-hand drive. Rayner was worried that the drivers might not accept the 1.75m-deep cabs, which have their bunks in a top pod; the Mercedes had sleeper cabs. There have been no problems, however. Rayner puts this down to the fact that the demountable bodies and more powerful engines on the MANs make the drivers' jobs easier. He also says his men are well-paid, and, unlike most international commercial drivers, are able to pick up tips.
The company carries about 1,000 consignments a year. One of its trucks will typically take the contents of about six three-bedroom houses, although some loads consist only of a couple of tea chests.
Loose furniture is wrapped in Jiffy paper and sticky tape. Although vehicles cube out before they reach their weight limit, the extra room with the Philips concept does take them very near their 15-tonne payload limit.
After January 1991 four-axle drawbars will be allowed to run at 35 tonnes in the UK (36 tonnes abroad), but legislators have not set limits for five or six axles.
It is possible that these vehicles, which are kinder to roads because the load is spread over more axles, could be held down to 32.5 tonnes, but EC ministers are likely to consider upping their limit to 38 tonnes.
As Rayner says, it is not easy to run a drawbar operation with this sort of uncertainty to cope with.
He is a former philosophy student and air traffic controller who set up Arts with his brother Mike after buying a secondhand Volkswagen LT35 which hauled a horsebox-type trailer to take removals to Spain for a handful of clients, most of whom they knew personally. They now own the company with another brother, Peter, and their retired father.
Rayner's public school accent marks him out from a typical haulage or removals background.
In fact, he started the company after taking a series of jobs as a way of getting to continental blues festivals. He picked the Spanish market because his family had always gone on holiday there.
At first, Arts was not run very professionally, says Rayner. Because they were running under 7.5 tonnes, they did not need HGV licences, of course. Expanding by word-of-mouth recommendations, they began hiring 7.5-tonners and, in 1983, bought a Ford Cargo. Two years later, they employed their first HGV driver, took their CPCs and applied for an international 0-Licence. Art's first HGV was a secondhand Scania drawbar, but because it was on leaf springs and loads were light, furniture was at risk of damage. In 1987 they replaced the trailer chassis with an air-suspended model.
MAINLAND
By this stage they were breaking into mainland Spain after years of concentrating on the Balearic islands and Andorra, so they bought two five-year-old Ford Cargo tractive units and four trailers from Walkers Crisps.
Buying such old trucks was a mistake, says Rayner: "We were having breakdowns every trip. The Cargos cost us £4,000 each, but by the time we got rid of them they were costing us £20,000 to maintain. If they broke down on the Continent we had to wait until Monday to get them going again. We had some irrate customers," he recalls.
So despite being short of money, the brothers decided to start buying new vehicles and gain the assurance of a manufacturer's warranty. In September 1987, they picked up a Mercedes 1625 tractive unit.
About 75% of the company's customers are in the South-East, but it collects from all over the country.
The company employs four office staff and seven packers, and plans to take on another two warehouse staff and a fourth HGV driver for the new MAN. It turned over £650,000 last year.
Arts joined the British Association of Removers 18 months ago. This helps it get the trade work — business from other removals firms with loads for Spain — which makes up 15% of its revenue. All its trucks are reloaded, often with shoes or furniture from factories near Valencia. The up-market nature of its business — 40% of its customers are buying second homes, the rest are retiring or moving to Spain for good — has protected it from the worst of the recession in house prices which has been hitting the UK industry.
Rayner is reluctant to move into other countries.
He believes the "airline type of service we want to run" is a bigger attraction than a "round-robin operation to all parts of Europe" would be.
Although Spanish second homes are not as cheap as they were, he says the country has the fastest-growing economy in Europe, and expects the Olympics in 1992 and World Expo in 1.993 will bring in even more business.
by Murdo Morrison