Eddie Stobart.

[red_slr]

I have had an agency driver turn up on his first day with a broken arm, in full plaster cast from his knuckles to the top of his elbow. Not a joke.

I can only assume he was off on the sick with his main job. This is in the days before driver cards so probably thought he could blag it.

[banjowilly]

Digga said:

Or loose freight/get lost/mysteriously run out of hours.

Theft is fairly rare on the supermarkets.The trailers are electronically sealed & generally goods are low value. Guys like PC world probably have bigger problems but outside of the company, you'll never hear about it. Largest source of shrinkage is among warehouse staff. Lots of ways of getting stuff out of sheds for the mischievously creative soul.

Anyway, the one that sticks in the mind was an agency guy who took a store delivery out to Ruislip & managed to block a driver in. When the guy asked him to move the trailer, he told the guy to fk off which unsurprisingly irritated a bit.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, the truck rolled in a few hours later minus it's windscreen, all the lenses on the vehicle AND the trailer and no headlights.

[loafer123]

Countdown said:

Mammasaid said:

Just Google Andrew Tinkler

So was Tinkler right?

Maybe. Or maybe the problem dates from when he was in charge.

[Digga]

banjowilly said:

Theft is fairly rare on the supermarkets.The trailers are electronically sealed & generally goods are low value. Guys like PC world probably have bigger problems but outside of the company, you'll never hear about it. Largest source of shrinkage is among warehouse staff. Lots of ways of getting stuff out of sheds for the mischievously creative soul.

Anyway, the one that sticks in the mind was an agency guy who took a store delivery out to Ruislip & managed to block a driver in. When the guy asked him to move the trailer, he told the guy to fk off which unsurprisingly irritated a bit.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, the truck rolled in a few hours later minus it's windscreen, all the lenses on the vehicle AND the trailer and no headlights.

Not just theft, but with multi drop type setups, it's common for drivers to just abandon goods - especially at big warehouses, where they can get away with it, due to sheer volume of freight - in order to just get their shift done and get back to base. Due in no small part to misaligned performance targets.

[banjowilly]

There is some truth in that but most routing & scheduling is done by software & on a repeat operation, those swinging the lead soon come to notice & get weeded out.

It all depends on the type of operation. A guy doing retail distribution on days with roll cages is enjoying a relatively easy life, a night trunk driver with a changeover even more so if that's your bag but the ones I feel for are parcel guys. That seems little more than indentured servitude to me.

[banjowilly]

Anyway, Stobart has been deep in it before. At one point around the late 90's when they were much smaller, they made a disastrous decision to buy about 300 trailers just as construction & use legislation was changing, making them the proud owners of a pile of shiny scrap & ended up in a whole heap of financial trouble, famously making more from their merch than running trucks for a while. Now though, they are embedded in a rare circle of a handful of transport groups capable of taking on the largest of operations.

It is exclusive at that level. A friend of mine works for Diageo & I've tried so many times to get in there as a subby & there's just no way they'll even look at it. He tells me when their UK ops come up for review, it effectively consists of a few rounds of golf, a couple of meals & a set of proposals from the likes of XPO, Stobart, DHL, Wincanton etc. It's nowhere near as competitive as you might think as the top guys become entwined with the few providers who can actually take the work. Stobart isn't going bust.

[Muzzer79]

red_slr said:

I have no sympathy.
I was told, don't know how true it is, that each one of their trucks makes them less than £50 a day.
The haulage / logistics industry has been struggling for 2-3 years and driving prices down and down is only going to result in one thing.
For some reason so many of the big firms just don't see the problem with this. Hopefully this will be a wake up call.

Couple of things.

Are you implying that £50 per day isn't good?

A truck making you £50 per day is very good (if you have enough trucks)

The article states they have 2700 vehicles. Call that 2200 artics (according to Google)

If they're only doing a 5 day week (which they're not) 2200 vehicles x 252 working days x £50 per vehicle = £27m profit per year.

Working in this industry I can tell you I'd definitely take that.....


I know that one of their main customers is Tesco, who are notoriously ruthless on driving down costs.

Margins have been small in the industry for years and prices are much of a much-ness (like the parcel industry)

Selling the product is what gets the business.

[Otispunkmeyer]

brickwall said:

Woodford the largest shareholder. Great.

Heh, that guy can't catch a break.

[red_slr]

Muzzer79 said:

red_slr said:

I have no sympathy.
I was told, don't know how true it is, that each one of their trucks makes them less than £50 a day.
The haulage / logistics industry has been struggling for 2-3 years and driving prices down and down is only going to result in one thing.
For some reason so many of the big firms just don't see the problem with this. Hopefully this will be a wake up call.

Couple of things.

Are you implying that £50 per day isn't good?

A truck making you £50 per day is very good (if you have enough trucks)

The article states they have 2700 vehicles. Call that 2200 artics (according to Google)

If they're only doing a 5 day week (which they're not) 2200 vehicles x 252 working days x £50 per vehicle = £27m profit per year.

Working in this industry I can tell you I'd definitely take that.....


I know that one of their main customers is Tesco, who are notoriously ruthless on driving down costs.

Margins have been small in the industry for years and prices are much of a much-ness (like the parcel industry)

Selling the product is what gets the business.

I am just saying how I see it. We are a very small operator (OL for 8 + 2) and we struggle to get any type of contract haulage work.

For example we had a larger scale job a year ago and it was cheaper to get another operator in to take the goods down to the job for us rather than use our own vehicles and drivers.

I worked out the costs rang round a few haulage firms and one came back about 25% less than the cost of us actually doing it.

That's the environment we find ourselves in.

Just my opinion though.

[red_slr]

Otispunkmeyer said:

brickwall said:

Woodford the largest shareholder. Great.

Heh, that guy can't catch a break.

Its almost like everything he did was high risk v high reward. Except the last bit has yet to appear.

[handpaper]

red_slr said:

I have had an agency driver turn up on his first day with a broken arm, in full plaster cast from his knuckles to the top of his elbow. Not a joke.

I can only assume he was off on the sick with his main job. This is in the days before driver cards so probably thought he could blag it.

A few years ago my firm took on a driver who had lost his left leg below the knee to diabetes complications. He got around OK on a prosthetic.
At the time, we had c.350 automatic DAF 105s and 5 manual 95s.
Guess what he was sent to Catford in?

Also, when he lost his leg he notified DVLA. Out of the HGV, car, and motorcycle entitlements he held, they withdrew all but...

the motorcycle!

[anonymous-user]

red_slr said:

I worked out the costs rang round a few haulage firms and one came back about 25% less than the cost of us actually doing it.

That's the environment we find ourselves in.

Just my opinion though.

Surely that’s a good thing for you?

[markcoznottz]

banjowilly said:

Digga said:

Or loose freight/get lost/mysteriously run out of hours.

Theft is fairly rare on the supermarkets.The trailers are electronically sealed & generally goods are low value. Guys like PC world probably have bigger problems but outside of the company, you'll never hear about it. Largest source of shrinkage is among warehouse staff. Lots of ways of getting stuff out of sheds for the mischievously creative soul.

Anyway, the one that sticks in the mind was an agency guy who took a store delivery out to Ruislip & managed to block a driver in. When the guy asked him to move the trailer, he told the guy to fk off which unsurprisingly irritated a bit.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, the truck rolled in a few hours later minus it's windscreen, all the lenses on the vehicle AND the trailer and no headlights.

...'You might know who we are but we KNOW who you are...understand?'

[Muzzer79]

red_slr said:

Muzzer79 said:

red_slr said:

I have no sympathy.
I was told, don't know how true it is, that each one of their trucks makes them less than £50 a day.
The haulage / logistics industry has been struggling for 2-3 years and driving prices down and down is only going to result in one thing.
For some reason so many of the big firms just don't see the problem with this. Hopefully this will be a wake up call.

Couple of things.

Are you implying that £50 per day isn't good?

A truck making you £50 per day is very good (if you have enough trucks)

The article states they have 2700 vehicles. Call that 2200 artics (according to Google)

If they're only doing a 5 day week (which they're not) 2200 vehicles x 252 working days x £50 per vehicle = £27m profit per year.

Working in this industry I can tell you I'd definitely take that.....


I know that one of their main customers is Tesco, who are notoriously ruthless on driving down costs.

Margins have been small in the industry for years and prices are much of a much-ness (like the parcel industry)

Selling the product is what gets the business.

I am just saying how I see it. We are a very small operator (OL for 8 + 2) and we struggle to get any type of contract haulage work.

For example we had a larger scale job a year ago and it was cheaper to get another operator in to take the goods down to the job for us rather than use our own vehicles and drivers.

I worked out the costs rang round a few haulage firms and one came back about 25% less than the cost of us actually doing it.

That's the environment we find ourselves in.

Just my opinion though.

It's a tough market for the small operators and I see your pain.

My subbies complain the same as you however there's almost always someone willing to do it cheaper. Operators are their own worst enemy sometimes....

[phil-sti]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

It’s also not the best road for trucks in the night and isn’t the most fuel efficient .

[wivenhoe]

pavarotti1980 said:

Surely the Stobart Group is big enough to absorb this? Air and Rail freight business too.

Unless of course they are struggling

They split the business - the air & rail sit in a totally different company.

[C.A.R.]

Muzzer79 said:

I know that one of their main customers is Tesco, who are notoriously ruthless on driving down costs.

I wonder if this will change, what with the merger with Booker. Booker of course having a contract with XPO logistics, you'd have thought they might look into harmonisation like they are with other services...

[TVR1]

Errm....

Has anyone actually read the article? Stems from a ‘£2 million’ discrepancy that the article then goes on to suggest that this amount relates to an overstatement of operating profit of 4%.
Unless my mathematics are way out, that suggest they still made around £55 million? Or am I reading it incorrectly?

[Europa1]

wivenhoe said:

pavarotti1980 said:

Surely the Stobart Group is big enough to absorb this? Air and Rail freight business too.

Unless of course they are struggling

They split the business - the air & rail sit in a totally different company.

Indeed; the whole point of limited companies and group structures - the ability to ring fence discrete parts of a business so that (hopefully) failure of one does not affect others.

[Europa1]

citizensm1th said:

Good, they have always struck me y as being quite to good to be true.

What's the betting tesco bails them out

Why is it "good"? I agree that the, ummmm, "racy" accounting policies, and those responsible for them, should be exposed, but to simply say "good", when the implications of this could be far more extensive seems strange.

Edited by Europa1 on Friday 23 August 20:56