WE’RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER
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Palletline was launched on 5 February 1992 from a hub in Coventry with 24 members. “Everyone was nervous about working with other hauliers,” says founder member and director Ken Hackling, MD at John Hackling (Transport). “It was never going to work, as we were all going to screw each other.”
Palletline, as a name if not concept, started at Guymers Transport, which used it for work it subcontracted. “I can remember going to a meeting at Guymers,” says Hackling. “I was the last to arrive and they were trying to find enough chairs and I got a three-legged chair!” However, with Guymers facing its own problems (Steve Aston of Guymers, Palletline’s first chairman, would leave when his company went belly up in 1993, founding rival Palletways in 1994), Palletline needed money. Hackling, Bob Russett, Colin Sturgess and John Watt backed the fledgling business with £20,000 each of their own money in a ballsy move in September 1992.
“I can remember coming back from one of the early meetings and wondering if we were doing the right thing. It was a gut feeling [to back it],” says Hackling.
Having secured the network’s immediate future, the challenge became selling the concept. Also, with the four members holding all the shares, a “them and us” situation developed. In a masterstroke, the decision was taken in August 1993 to offer the shares to all.
If you wanted to be involved in Palletline, you had to buy a minimum of 2,000 shares, with a cap of 20,000. “Everyone became a shareholder, so we’re all in it together,” says Hackling.
Bob Rushworth, MD of Expect Distribution, joined the network early on, back when his business had a turnover of just over £350,000 and was called Pennine Parcels. He was on the steering committee and later the board. “Look at it today, we are an £18m company. How have we got there? We got there thanks to Palletline,” says Rushworth.
“We went out and did it, and didn’t fall by the wayside,” he says. “We could have done.” But importantly they didn’t, and as their 10th anniversary strapline shouted: “the company that changed an industry” remains in rude health.