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Border crossings
Page 22
Page 23
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Eugene O'Reilly has come a long way since he began with one truck in Newry. Nearly 35 years and 100 trucks later, the Dublin-based Irish Haulier of the Year tells Patric Cunnane the secret of his success: just relax...
Despite building up a fleet of 100 trucks and four depots in Ireland and the UK. Eugene O'Reilly remains fiercely ambitious. He is currently chasing a contract different from anything the business is now doing — though he's understandably cagey about the details.
"We're still expanding as opportunities present themselves," he says. "In business, as in life, you cannot stand still — you either go forward or back.
And it isn't just new contracts that O'Reilly is after: "We're always on the lookout to expand; to buy any company that we have synergies with."
Not for nothing is Dublin-based O'Reilly Transport the current Irish Haulier of the Year. This recognition came last October at the Irish Road Transport Awards, which are organised by the Irish Road Haulage Association and sponsored by Commercial Motor. This wasn't the firm's first taste of success at the IRHA
awards; two years ago it was named Irish Logistics Operator of the Year.
Despite his restless approach,O'Reilly comes across as a supremely relaxed man. He sits behind his desk in a sunny office which doubles as a boardroom.The dominant red of the office doors and blinds mirror the O'Reilly Transport livery and the colours of his favourite Gaelic football team, Down, from Northern Ireland.
"You get more done when you're relaxed," he says."When you're uptight and stressed you achieve nothing."
Early experience
O'Reilly set up as an owner-driver in Newry,Co. Down back in 1972 and his move into general haulage wasn't the family's first experience of transport —his parents ran a furniture shop with two vans for household removal and his nephews are still in the furniture removals business.
However, he quickly decided that branch of transport was not for him: "Lorry drivers aren't used to dealing with the public — you need special guys [for removals]."
O'Reilly moved south of the border to Dundalk in 1981 and, encouraged by the growth of ferry services from Dublin, moved to Dublin Port in 1996.
The company still has a sizeable presence north of the border,ninning the transport operation of packaging firm SCA in Warrenpoint. O'Reilly also has a site in Belfast, and a four-acre UK depot at Heysham Port, Lanes opened last year; this will soon include warehousing.
The company's 100 vehicles are split between Warrenpoint, Belfast, Heysham and Dublin; it also provides regular work for up to 25 owner-drivers.
Heysham isn't. O'Reilly's only foothold in mainland Britain — the firm has formed a partnership with fellow haulier Jimmy McGrath to set up Freight Team Bradford and Freight Team Ireland. These are essentially groupage operations. O'Reilly, as Freight Team Ireland, sends full loads to the UK where Freight learn Bradford breaks them down for local distribution, and vice-versa.
O'Reilly knows exactly why the business has grown: "You put the right systems in place and the right people. If you have the right people, things will happen; if you don't, they won't." Not that he expected the business to grow to the extent it has, but now it has he appreciates the economies of scale that its size affords, O'Reilly has been a driver but would not count himself as trucker — the vehicles arc simply tools of the trade. If anything, he is more of a computer buff and has been involved from the beginning in developing the computer system that links all the offices. "When a customer makes a booking it is visible in any of the offices it enables us to know where we have vehicles available to pick up and deliver," hc explains.
In fact, if you ask him where trucks sit in his list of priorities, they don't even feature. He puts his family first, the business second, Gaelic football third and computers fourth. He also enjoys a good book now and then and took James Joyce's notoriously impenetrable Ulysses on holiday: "It's not that heavy going," he claims, although like most who try he did not finish it.
As happens so often in this industry, O'Reilly's family and business are inseparable. His wife Virginia is involved, as are daughters Andrea (traffic office); Alison (purchase ledger); Rosalind (nominal ledger); Janine (credit controller) and his two sons David Owen (garage fitter) and Gareth (traffic office).
Commercial Motor met several members of the O'Reilly family at last year's Irish Road Transport awards and can attest that they are all as outgoing as Eugene.
People person
"I have a keen interest in business, any business," O'Reilly says. "It doesn't have to be transport, but we enjoy transport. We enjoy business, we enjoy dealing with people. I spend as much time with our customers as I can."
But what does he do when he is not out with customers? A typical day begins by answering e-mails and opening mail. —Then I look for
things to do — I troubleshoot." At the moment, that involves trying to get the government more interested in providing training for the transport industry; O'Reilly has arranged a meeting with FAS, the government's training agency.
"We offer training to our drivers because no one else will do it," he says. "Government should have a role to play in training all the trades.There's training available if you want to be a fitter or a bricklayer, but if you want to be a truck driver you're left on your own."
As a Dublin-based haulier he is beset by traffic problems, including the delays created by trucks queuing to pay M50 tolls — and he fears the problems could actually worsen when the port tunnel opens this summer. It is likely that trucks will be banned from the city from 8am to 8pm and a bottleneck will be created by the volume of traffic going into the tunnel.