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DRIFTNorbert Dentressangle is one of the fastest-growing hauliers in France, and its UK business is booming too with 33,000 Channel crossings last year.
• Norbert Dentressangle is not so much growing as mushrooming. In 1979, the company's turnover was about 22.5 million on a fleet of 40 tractors. Ten years later it has a turnover of 270 million and a fleet of 700 tractors and 911 trailers.
In 1987 capital investment was about 2400,000. In 1988, the figure tripled to 21.2 million. In just three years, from 1986 to 1988, Dentressangle has more than doubled its workforce from 309 to 700 employees.
This growth has been built on the concept of ''Europe, an everyday reality", says company president Norbert Dentressangle.
Growth has forced the company to purchase new vehicles to keep up with expansion and tractive units are replaced every three years.
The average Dentressangle tractor logs about 120,000km a year. Trucks are replaced at about 360,000km — or about half the industry's "useful life" average. The striking red and white livery is well maintained, adding to the youthful image of the company, which is run by a president who has only just turned 30 and a workforce with an average age of 32. It also lends credence to Dentressangle's claim that "all vehicles are maintained as new".
The majority of the fleet is Renault, mostly R-365s and G-290s, and a variety of trailer types. The company operates 517 tilt semi-trailers. Of those, 162 are 13.4m semi-trailers. Dentressangle operates maximum-length trailers because customers now demand the highest possible cubic space and this forced the company to operate G-290 top-sleeper power units to meet the traditional overall length limit of 15.5m. At the beginning of next year, when the length limit rises to 16.5m, the company will scrap its top-sleeper units.
"A few days ago we announced to our drivers that we would be replacing the top sleepers very, very quickly," says Dentressangle spokesman Thierry Luduc. "We thanked them for their patience and told them that soon they would be driving cabs of a more normal length."
EXPANSION
Britain is now Dentressangle's chief foreign market and it is expanding into Italy, Belgium and Spain. All the freight Dentressangle handles is international.
Its service strategy is diversity with specialized equipment ranging from "cereal tippers" to chemical tankers to swap bodies for combined transport.
"Our objective," says Dentressangle, "is to provide all our clients with the most complete range of services possible in order to establish easy and efficient communication throughout the European market."
Besides its high-cube semi-trailers, the company also operates 42 piggyback units, 40 Tautliners, 72 flat beds, 22 box-van trailers, 20 reefers, 31 tippers, 24 bulk liquid chemical tankers, 75 dry-bulk tankers and 110 tractor-trailer units.
Although it aspires to a pan-European network, and claims to be the leading truckload carrier on the "France-Great Britain-France" route, Dentressangle has a great deal of work left to establish itself in continental Europe, especially in southern countries.
But its location couldn't be better. The company's modern headquarters lies just south of Lyon a few miles from the A7, the major north/south autoroute in France, and the lifeline for the industries of the Rhone Valley. Dentressangle also has easy access to the major road link to Switzerland and northern Italy and to the convergence of autoroutes near Beaune, which the French reckon will become the "crossroads of Europe".
Judging by past performance the company's new ventures into the Spanish and Italian markets will create a solid network in four of the major SEM countries, including the toughest for Continental carriers — Britain.
Rumour has it that Dentressangle could soon top the shopping list of Europe's big cross-border distribution groups. The suitor could be British or failing that West German.
0 by John Parker