'Our whole method of operation might alter'
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It began going to Spain, now its biggest market, in 1981, and set up an office in Poole for customs clearance.
Framptons started doing groupage in its own vehicles in 1983. Today, it runs a trailer a day to Barcelona carrying industrial goods and bringing back cotton yarn, clothing and light fittings. ICI accounts for 35% of its revenue on the service.
The company sends up to 15 trailers to the Continent each week. Half of them are run by subcontractors. Much of its groupage in the UK is collected by small haulage companies and delivered to depots in Manchester and London, where Frarnptons leases space.
One trailer delivers groupage to France each week and another to Belgium and Holland. Despite the growth of its Continental traffic, it has closed its Poole depot. Using fewer subcontractors and modern communications, such as faxes have allowed the company to centralise, explains Frampton.
MOVING FORWARD
It is building a £400,000 one-hectare transport depot beside its existing offices, which it shares with the company's egg processing factory. Although it has its own shotblasting and repair shop, vehicles have to park in a rutted yard. The new site will be black-topped and hidden from neighbouring houses and the road by landscaped banks.
As for any international haulier, travelling to foreign countries has presented Iangruage problems for staff. The company has one multilingual office worker and at least two of its 20 drivers, most of whom have been with Framptons since the early 1970s, speak good French, Spanish and Italian.