Outside of the box...
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Courier companies are having to cope with the slump just like their haulier cousins. CM caught up with Cheshire-based 747 Express Freight.
Worcis / images: Kevin Swaitow
TUCKED AWAY ON a trading estate in Winsford, Cheshire, is 747 Express Freight, a company that claims it is willing to deliver anything from "a packet to a pallet, 24 hours a day': For Steve Blackie (pictured below right), managing director of 747 Express Freight, which he started in 2001 after a career in asset management and truck sales, courier work remains a major part of the organisation's portfolio — even though the market has gone a little sour at the moment.
The basis for courier work is emergency deliveries and covering for mistakes, Blackie says, adding: "It' a customer spends £10,000 a month with a packaging firm, and they miss a box off the delivery truck to London, they will pay £170 to get that box there in time, and we will deliver it.
"If that same customer only spends £5,000 a month, the packaging firm will say the customer is only spending that amount a month. It's not worth spending £170 to get the box there straight away because the margins are tighter. If we miss a box, they can wait a day and it'll go on the next truck.
Something similar is happening to every customer in the service-led and same-day-delivery market. Blackie continues: -The drop in courier work began in September 2008, and it hasn't started to recover — it has got worse."
Cost-led market
According to Blackie. between January and March, the company was running at a loss: "During the winter we delivered 20kg rock salt bags to Merseyside Police and Merseyside Rail to the stations. That helped pick up the slack," he says, but throughout April, the company lost £5,000 in turnover.
"Courier work has died on its feet. It has become a cost-led market and not a service-led market. The same-day mar ket will always be there, it's next day stuff that has changed." He offers a stark warning to those resistant to change: -If we were a pure courier company, we'd have shut it in March 2009."
Mackie runs a 12-strong fleet, which includes eight 3.5-tonne vans, two 7.5-tonne trucks and two tractors. He also runs the Renault trucks hospitality trailer and a support vehicle for the truck manufacturer, an indication of the type of work he wants to expand into.
"I have been with Renault Trucks for six years hauling around its hospitality trailer. Despite the 2009 CV Show being cancelled, we had the busiest 12 months to date. Last year, we did 18 events, this year, we have done 25," he says.
Blackie has also worked on events for Promo Logistics, delivering Pot Noodles for promotion, as well working on a wholemeal bread promotion — the Hovis Challenge — where the firm bagged 6,000 loaves a day for two weeks.
"It's seasonal work from May to September; it's good pay If you could do it 12 months of the year, I'd drop courier work tomorrow. We've got the transport and storage to do it. Other event management firms hire in vehicles, hut with the courier work, we already have the vehicles to utilise," he says. •