T revor Willans had been working as a dri for his
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father Bill for 18 years when, 1994, the company, Darlington-ba Winans Transport, was forced into liqui tion. Winans decided to stick to what knew. He re-mortgaged his house a bought two Seddon 401s pulling curta siders from the receiver and started his own transp company, NDL.
"I built up through contacts, a lot of hard work an lot of knocking on doors," he says. His father's corn had been carrying furnishings and Willans used c tacts he had made in the trade to win work from 1 businesses.
Soft furnishings still provides 50% of his busine his main client is Europa Sofabeds based in Newt Aycliffe. The company supplies many of the retail a mail-order outlets such as Grattan, Littlewoods and Argos chain.
NDL is their principal contractor, taking fumi from the factory to RDCs and outlets.
Willans has found a niche in the market with b but light products and runs his fleet of artics at
D tonnes. 'That way we pay £324.50 for six month's VED," he explains.
Although furniture is still the mainstay of his business, Winans now has a contract with pharmaceuticals company BDF Beiersdorf, the maker of Nivea cream. NDL handles all the company's distribution in the North-East and is in the process of negotiating for its Scottish distribution.
Beiersdorf's factory is in Birmingham and Willans has organised the work as backloads. "We are running furniture into Birmingham, doing in the region 01 20 to 30 loads per week into the Argos RDC at Stafford. From Stafford we run into Birmingham and pick up return loads of pharmaceuticals for the North-East," says Willans.
Rapid growth
NDL has experienced a period of rapid expansion recently, with the company enjoying growth of 35% over the past 12 months—but this has brought its own problems. "We don't want to continue to grow at the same rate as we grew last year, but we go where the business is and respond to the customer's demands," says Winans. "The biggest problem with the fast expansion was cashflow but we have managed that very carefully by negotiating packages with customers so we get paid promptly and on-time. We don't have a bad debt problem and we have a good relationship with the bank manager."
N DL now runs three operating centres in Newton Aydiffe to accommodate its fleet. The operation is based in one with the others acting as satellite depots. "We are also in the process of opening a depot in Birmingham which is planned to come on line in the spring of 2001," says Willans. "The land is rented and we plan to base five vehicles there. But I could put 35 down there if I wanted to."
When the Birmingham depot is established NDL will start trunlfing between the North East and the Midlands to streamline the operation and cut down on night-out rates.
The company also carries dried foodstuffs, packet foods and cereals back to the NorthEast for distribution and bulk deliveries; for this operation it runs two Daf 455 round the North-East and into Scotland.
SPECIALITY Light bulk.
TURNOVER 11.25m,
Willans knows the importance of service. "We sell ourselves on service and never let a customer down," he says. "We do stand our ground—in the haulage industry you've got to— but we listen to the customer and act on the customer's needs. During the recent fuel crises our customers in Birmingham had the usual amount of distribution to do in the North-East and 1 was sending vehicles down to Birmingham, at my cost, just to get their work out. We kept that customer rolling and that's going to pay dividends in the future."
Winans sees the company's vehicle tracking system as part of that service. He has equipped his fleet with global tracking from Minor Planet and says it has proved to be a selling point: "The advantage is that the customer knows where the vehicle is, rather than relying on the driver saying, 'I'm at Junction 28 and running late,' or whatever. We can pinpoint him exactly. When it was installed a couple of drivers had a bit of a gripe and my opinion was if they had a gripe then they had got something to hide."
However, having been a driver himself Willans isn't in the business of asking his drivers to do the impossible and he is proud of his relationship with them: "We run a very tight-knit group, have a good team of drivers and they know how we operate—and I know how long it takes to get from A to B."
NDL puts its drivers through a defensive driving course run by Drive and Survive, and 75% of the drivers are also trained for aviation security. "We do a little bit of air-freight courier service, running just-in-time deliveries into the airport mostly bound for Scandinavia," Willans explains. "You have to be securitytrained as you are going straight onto the plane. You can't just have anybody doing that; you have to be accredited and licensed."
No dictators
The company employs 22 staff including 18 full-time drivers, three of whom were with Winans' father's company. One of them has worked with him indirectly for IG years. "I'd like to pay my lads a fortune, they deserve it, but I can't," he says. "Our wages are not the best in the area but we have a good team and the lads are looked after and treated as human beings. We ask them to do a job and thank them for doing it."
NDL is still a family company; Willans' wife Claire is involved on the administration side and his brother Gary joined three years ago as general manager Having established a niche in light bulk Willans is confident about his future and glad that he is not dependent on general haulage: "That's a very difficult game to be in. You are very much dictated to on your rates and I'm not in the business to be dictated to It's very easy to be pessimistic; it's a difficult industry. You have got to get up, get out there and do it.
"There are going to be changes in the haulage industry and whether it's for good or bad it will be the survival of the fittest— and I intend to be one of the fittest," he says. "My father took the failure of his company to the grave. I owe a lot to him and where this company goes is largely down to him."