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Alan Richards
• Alan Richards. assistant managing director of National Carriers Ltd, is a mineralogist in his spare time. He spends his leisure looking for what appear to be common minerals but are recognized by the expert as semi-precious stones. Alan's hobby is very closely related to his day-to-day work with one of the country's largest parcels carriers.
Road transport would hardly be described even by its most avid supporters as a thing of beauty but Alan recognizes that in it, there are many aspects which improve with polishing. Once they have been properly treated, he says, they develop into invaluable assets.
He instances two such assets at NCL — the company's almost unblemished industrial relations record and its recognition that the complete distribution concept becomes more valuable the more it is cultivated.
Alan believes that good industrial relations are based on everyone at every level of management and unions being aware of policy' and, objectives, with nothing hidden. If the drivers realize what the company is doing to rectify or exploit a situation then, according to Alan, they will play their part.
On "total distribution", he is of the opinion that customers have to be educated to accept that this is something which must be paid for. He believes NCL is almost at the stage where the customer will happily pay for collection, warehousing, delivery, documentation, speed and security.
Alan Richards is a former railwayman, who served in Cumberland, the Midlands and Scotland. But he had the advantage over many of his colleagues in that he was attached to the road services operation for most of his railway career and therefore the change from British Rail to National Carriers was not the same traumatic experience for him as it was for many others.
He has two grown-up sons and a long-suffering wife who accepts his 12-hour business day on the promise that they will enjoy an annual holiday together. Alas, she finds that he then spends his time hunting for those semi-precious stones in depths of tin mines, on beaches and slag tips! I.S.