Eat More Chips back for second helping
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By Chris Druce THE DIRECTOR OF the haulage irm behind the Eat More Chips livery has paid testament to his customers and staff for sticking with him during the past few dificult months.
Toby Ovens, director of recently formed Broughton Transport Solutions, says: “I pride myself on the service levels I give and I think that’s why everyone stuck by us.”
The Wiltshire transport provider has emerged from family irm D Mortimer & Sons, which had a winding-up petition served against the transport side of the business by HM Revenue and Customs last autumn (CM 27 October).
Ovens conirms that this situation has been resolved in full but is unable to provide more details at present about events that led up to the petition.
He does admit how hard it was to see the company’s 20 artics parked up from October through to March, while he awaited an interim O-licence for new business Broughton Transport.
“As soon as I got the phone call saying the operator’s licence was active, I had a lorry in Avonmouth two hours later loading a consignment for Holland,” he says.
“I would never let it go to nothing; even if it just meant putting two trucks on the road and starting from scratch.” The wholesale fruit and veg and dairy businesses of D Mortimer & Sons, run by Ovens’s father Jonathan, continue to trade. Ovens will continue to run the D Mortimer livery, along with the well-known Eat More Chips slogan.
He is optimistic about the future and says there is plenty of work for hauling fresh, frozen and ambient goods to the Continent. However, maintaining margin remains a challenge with foreign irms undercutting to take business.
“Not many people understand how their tin of baked beans gets on the shelf and what [hauliers] have to go through,” adds Ovens.