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' Potential operators should be vetted more thoroughly'
Page 63
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IN Tommy Longstaff used to have a safe, steady job as a fitter with a successful Volvo dealership in the north-east of England. Promotion to service manager meant he could hang his overalls up for the last time. But sitting behind a desk all day wearing a collar and tie was not for him.
By the time he was 38, Longstaff wanted to be out there getting his hands dirty again, but preferably for himself. The challenge of running his own business was a temptation he could not resist. Now, 10 years of hard slog later, he is a successful owneroperator with a trophy-winning truck which is nearly paid for and an Operator's Licence which has remained blemish free.
Longstaff is a time-served commercial vehicle fitter and he worked for the busy Volvo dealership, Darlington Com
mercials, for 17 years, the last 111111111111a six and half of which were spent as the white-coated service manager.
When he made the decision to leave that secure job to go it alone, Longstaff had nothing. They say there is no friendship in business, but ironically it was a little help from a friend which was the deciding factor whether he got going or not. And that friend was his old boss Dougie Tait, the owner of Darlington Commercials.
The first thing Tait did was guarantee a 23,000 overdraft so Longstaff could buy his fuel until the first cheque arrived: the unpopular 90-day system of payment was as rife in 1979 as it is today.
Now all Longstaff needed was a truck and trailer. By chance, Tait had a repossessed Volvo F10 and tandem-axle flat bed in his yard.
He and Longstaff came to a gentleman's agreement as to how this outfit should be paid for. As the money started coming in so the truck was paid off.
ESTABUSHED
After six years .Longstaff was established in his own right, but admits it was the hardest six years of his life. After an initial spell sub-contracting for other hauliers, and then 18 months hauling containers — all work which paid peanuts — a dock strike was threatened.
Longstaff did not wait for the dockers to execute their threat. Instead, he got on the phone. United Biscuits had some work but they wanted a curtainsider trailer, not a flatbed, so Longstaff promptly got his Crane Fruehauf trailer converted at a cost of 24,500.
United Biscuits proved to be a regular customer and it still is, but gradually Longstaffs old F10 wore out. The fact that its owner-driver was a trained Volvo fitter helped prolong the truck's life, but even Volvos have to retire in the end. Fortunately by this time Longstaff did at least have some more lucrative work hauling for UB.
By 1986 he had established his financial credibility so he bought his present 22:3kW (300hp) Volvo F10 with Hi-line cab. He believes in Volvos and, not surprisingly, he bought his new truck from Darlington Commercials. He has opted for the eight-speed gearbox, reckoning that with the high torque of the 223kW engine, fuel consumption is better than it would be with the 10-speed model. The truck cost him 235,000 including VAT, an Eminox exhaust and a Volvo night heater. It was bought on a hire-purchase agreement over four years which was a slightly more orthodox method of purchase than the first time round. However, Darlington Commercials is still Longstaffs operating centre and it also does all the servicing. Repairs to date have been minimal.
Longstaff still hauls UB's products south to London, and his wife June tries to arrange each backload before he gets there. He makes two or three trips a week south from his loading point at Teesside and planning well ahead for a
return load is important, although not always successful.
June is co-director of this small limited company and is proud of the fact that her husband runs his truck by the book, and of the trophies it has won. June is also transport manager, book-keeper and accountant, and holds a CPC. She has some strong views of the haulage industry and the way some operators break the rules.
The motive is often greed but it can also mean the difference between life or death for a business. June is unsympathetic. She recalls the early years when her husband was struggling to get going and when the temptation to do just one more load, even though the tacho said no, was at its greatest: "Potential operators should be vetted more thoroughly before they are let loose to slash rates and there fore find themselves in a posi tion where they have to run illegally in order to survive.
If everyone ran legally there would be more work to be had — but sadly they don't," she says.
Crisps are a high-volumei low-weight commodity and, since these are usually the south-bound load, Longstaff runs on four axles and therefore at a GVW of 32 tonnes: "The extra revenue generated by the ability to operate at 38 tonnes would not justify the extra expense needed to gear up to the extra carrying capacity," says Longstaff. For 99% of the time he would only be running at 38 tonnes with return load at a return-load rate only marginally more than the cost of the diesel required to transport it in the first place.
EXCEEDED
Longstaff has some old-fashioned ideas about rates, mainly because he thinks the rates themselves have long exceeded their sell-by date: "We have not had a rate rise in four years. Instead, they wanted to knock 28 off a load to London would you believe? When I refused to accept that, they said they could no longer guarantee the work. So in real terms, taking into account the rising operating costs and the rise in the cost of new equipment, the rates have gone down.
"Next year, when the law changes on the overall length of a truck and trailer, it will be interesting to see what transpires. You can bet your bottom dollar the customers will all want us to have longer trailers to accommodate two extra pallets. But will they pay for two extra pallets?" 0 by Laurence Kiely