Creditors furious at Transworld meeting
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/ Police were called to an angry creditors' meeting winding upTransworld Distribution Services after its directors were threatened and its offices attacked.
The company owes more than Lim to 1,000 companies — most of them small haulage firms — but no money can be paid for six months, creditors were told last week (CM 23-29 May).
Payment will not exceed 20p in the pound, receiver Mervin Langley of Sorsky's told the packed meeting in a Cambridge hotel.
"It is a very sorrowful case — a number of owner-drivers have lost their vehicles, and could lose their homes," Langley told the meeting, which included the Transport Users Group and Owner Operators UK representing individual hauliers.
Transworld has assets of £384,000 but £280,000 is in the form of debts owed by its customers, which Sorsky's will attempt to collect.
Hauliers owed cash by Transworld have sold trucks and possessions to save their homes, Other have gone out of business.
Langley says Transworld is "in breach of company law" because its accounts are unaudited. They reveal a loss of £100,000.
Accusations
Creditors at the meeting accused Transworld of links with Eazee Euro Services, the firm which claims to have taken over its 10 depots.
Sorsky's says it is taking legal action to prevent Eazee Euro using Transworld depots: "We have rejected an offer from Eazee Euro because it has no financial standing," Langley told creditors.
"But we are awaiting a cash offer from a major transport company which has made an approach."
Transworld directors Roy Hooson and Glynn Lunn were at the Cambridge meeting, Hoo son told CM: "I have no connection with Eazee Euro beyond it being a Transworld customer."
But one haulier who rang Transworld's Felixstowe depot
claims he was answered by a woman who said: "Transworld Distribution — oh, sorry we're bankrupt — Eazee Euro, may I help your
Hooson admitted that he is a former director of an electronics firm which crashed five years ago.
Langley told CM: "Some Transworld depots have been
attacked and their offices sma shed." His assistant Barbara Cooper described "men crying into their phones on motorways — I had to urge them to pull over".
APS of Northampton told Langley it has been forced to sell the lorry that was its only asset.
JFG Slade also of Northamp ton is owed £4,300. "I want to know how a company like that with no assets can go under," Slade told CM.
He said that pay ments were ex tended from 30
to 60 and then to 90 :„.„,4
days.
Andrew Edwards of Boston, Lincs says he is owed £2,500. "It's finished by business — I've sold my lorry and I'm looking for Kevin Copping of Shield Transport in Ongar, Essex runs five trucks. He is owed £18,000 and has sold his car to pay his drivers' wages. He told Hooson: "If I lose my house and my haulage business through this, God help you," adding "a lot of distress has been caused to genuine people."
Mary Kinsella of the United Transport Association called for a "fraud squad investigation" into the company's affairs.
The Transport Users Group said it received a cheque for £300 in February which bounced. It believes Transworld should have stopped trading then. Hooson said he recognised the company had difficulties two weeks before Sorsky's was called in on 8 May after an unnamed backer withdrew an offer of £200,000.
Suffering
But Langley said it is "without doubt" that Transworld had been suffering financial problems for longer than six months.
Helen Scarr, regional credit controller for Central Trailer Rentco, told the meeting her firm is owed £70,000 and received a cheque for £9,000 in April which bounced. Scarr said that lack of help by Transworld in recovering rented trailers had led CTR to report 12 to the police as stolen.
Langley advised operators holding trailers to keep them until the owners are traced, A creditors' committee has been formed comprising Kevin Copping of Shield Transport; Robert Sutton of the Transport Users Group; Helen Scarr of Central Trailer Rentco and Touche Ross, acting for Owner Operators UK,