Hauliers working in a niche market have to invest in
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the right equipment if they are to thrive. That doctrine has not been lost on Hire Power, a firm that operates an immaculate fleet to transport one of the most fragile loads on the road: windows. David Taylor reports.
earing the name Hire Power, you might conclude that the company described is in the business of hiring compressors or generators. You would never guess it specialises in delivering windows.
Hire Power is a play on words—read "higher power"—and the intention is to describe the quality of the company's service. Based in Harlow, Essex, the company has depots in Lincoln, Liverpool and Hull, and most of its activities involve delivering windows, both glazed and unglazed, from the manufacturer's factory to the customer.
We re not really a hire company, we're a haulage company," says Paul Dixon, the Lincoln-based operations manager for the Eastern Division. "We do have a self-drive division based in Harlow, but we also have a general haulage division and a contract division." Dixon's responsibility covers only the contract work.
2 Once you have an idea of the company cf_ structure, the next—and most intriguing-3
D question is: why windows? "We deliberately try to find niche markets that the big boys don't want to deal with," says Dixon, Deterred by the risk of breakages and the resulting costs, carrying glass is a job many hauliers are happy to leave to someone else, Consequently, Dixon believes Hire Power is one of the largest hauliers to specialise in this work. Geographically, it is certainly one of the most comprehensive,
In Liverpool the company has a contract with Hanson Glass and operates nine vehicles, from 7.5-tonners to Sprinters; in Hull there is a seven-vehicle fleet dedicated to General Electric Corporation outfit Stereon, which makes polycarbonate roofs for conservatories.
Breakage factor
"Not many hauliers specialise in this. In fact, the work is mostly done by the window manufacturers themselves," Dixon says, the reason again being the breakage factor. But Hire Power delivers windows all over the UK, and claims to have the lowest rate of breakages in transit in the industry.
The Lincoln operation serves only one client, Starglaze, to which Hire Power has dedicated four Scania 360s and three dosecoupled drawbar trailers. Dixon has an office on the client's premises from which he co-ordinates the transport operation, but the vehicles themselves are based at Harlow.
"Three of the Scanias have just been delivered, and they look fan tastic—they've got a state-of-the-art paint job," Dixon enthuses. Each of the three new Scanias has huge photographic images on the sides and rear, the work of Metro Media of Crawley, West Sussex. They have a conservatory on one side, a house on the other side and a terraced cottage on the back," says Dixon.
The vehicles are certainly eye-catching. "Only today I was on the M25, and twice a car stopped me and the driver said words to the effect of 'That's some design!--something that could only happen on the M25, of course, as Dixon took three hours to nudge the few miles from junction 4 to the Dartford Tunnel.
The livery idea was Dixon's, even though it is the client, not the haulier, who gets the publicity. The only advertising Hire Power does is on the vehicles' number plates: each registration number begins HPC, for Hire Power (Contracts). Hire Power's vehicles are bought new and operated for exactly four years before being replaced. says Dixon. This is timed to coincide with the renewal of the company's four-year contract with Starglaze. "We've been with Starglaze about six or seven years, and we're on our second contract with them now," he says.
Driving windows across the country requires a high level of competence, and Hire Power says its drivers are highly trained. The vehicles have gas suspension all round, but, says Dixon, "you have to drive like you're on ice all the time. If you hit a kerb while you're manoeuvring, you are likely to break something."
Hire Power delivered 149,000 glazed units last year, with a breakage rate of only o.o4%, which is pretty good. Dixon says. "The customers themselves break 4-5%."
Demanding the utmost care from his drivers, Dixon has developed something of a mistrust of agency drivers.
"We've had some horrendous agency men," he says bluntly. "Five weeks ago an agency driver hit a low bridge in Salisbury and laid the truck over—wrote it off. I'd given him the exact route, and he shouldn't even have been in Salisbury."
The upshot is that Hire Power avoids using agencies. There is one exception, and Dixon is keen to give a plug to a small outfit in Lincoln called HGV.
"It's a small operation, and it employs only six drivers. We always get a choice of the same two blokes, and they are both excellent," says Dixon.
Substantial growth
This avoidance of agencies means that when one of his drivers goes sick or takes a holiday it is often Dixon who jumps into the cab—hence his M25 experience last month. This is no hardship, though. He is a driver by profession, and moved into management nine years ago when he joined Hire Power after a career driving for small Lincolnshire firms.
"Hire Power has been good to me," Dixon says. "The firm has grown substantially over the years, and I think I've grown with it."
That growth is likely to continue, perhaps even accelerate. Hire Power is negotiating a contract which, if it comes off, will add i5m-f6m to group turnover, and add a new client, a new Midlands depot and new 15-vehicle fleet to its portfolio. That's about as much as Dixon can reveal at this stage. We'll all know by October, he says.
Domestic industry
He is content at Hire Power but, like many in the haulage industry, he becomes irritable at the mention of government policy, VED and diesel prices. He wonders how our domestic industry competes with Continental operators. And, although Hire Power is a Road Haulage Association member, Dixon has no qualms in revealing that his managing director, Gary Sando, is prone to asking why he ever bothered to join, citing what he sees as the
RHA's inertia.
"I was at the truckstop at Alconbury in Cambridgeshire recently, and there was an owner-driver handing out leaflets about a protest planned for 8 August," says Dixon. "It's guys like these who are doing all the work. What are our trade associations doing?"