GI R L K aren Hodgson is a woman who knows what she
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wants—and so far it looks like she's got it. At just 29, Hodgson owns and runs a fast-growing haulage business based on Teesside. The future for her and her company, Haulagelink, looks promising.
It wasn't always like this. When she left school in 1986, aged 16 and with five GCSEs, Hodgson couldn't decide what she wanted. First she thought she wanted to be a teacher, then to work in a bank. But she ended up as a secretary in a heavy engineering business.
It wasn't until she moved on and landed a job with Bell Lines, based in Teesport, that she found her true vocation.
"Once I saw those big artics, that was it. I was gone—hook, line and sinker," she recalls. "I just fell in love with the business." Working as a secretary in the Bell Lines transport office, Hodgson soon learnt the basics, and ultimately the fine detail, of running a transport operation. She rose quickly through the ranks, eventually becoming transport co-ordinator.
By mid-1997 Bell Lines was in serious financial difficulties, and in the summer of that year it ceased trading. But Hodgson had seen the writing on the wall and she made her move in June 1996 when the company started laying off staff.
"Bell Lines was a fantastic company, but I was soon thinking about starting my own business," she says. "I waited for the right package to come along. I knew what I wanted so I waited just long enough."
Hodgson's time at Bell Lines had given her the skills and knowledge she needed for her next step. "I was overseeing the office, and it was more or less the same as running a large haulage company. I just decided to scale it down and do it for myself," she explains. Three months to the day after leaving Bell Lines, Haulagelink started trading. Hodgson was 27.
"It was a bit daunting at the time," she says, with disarming understatement. "All that responsibility—for example, when you buy your first vehicle you're talking about tens of thousands of pounds. It's frightening, but it gets you out of bed in the morning."
Once out of bed, Hodgson's feet hardly touched the ground. "For three months it felt like there was a lot of running about doing nowt. Then it all happened." The first month was spent buried deep in paperwork, trying to raise the capital to buy her first truck. "The bank was very thorough," she says.
But she got her i9o,000 bank loan and with it she bought a new Volvo F8 420 Globetrotter XL. "It's the Rolls-Royce of Volvos," she says, conjuring up a curious hybrid. "But I thought, if I'm going to spend loads of time in it, I'd get the best I could afford."
Oh yes, she chives them too. Although she got into the road transport business on the management side, she had long harboured a desire to climb into the cab and drive. She had studied for her HGV licence while at Bell Lines, helped by one of the hauliers she had employed there, owner-driver Doug Firman of Firman Haulage.
Missing
"For me, the most difficult bit—running a transport business—was under my belt. The only bit missing was the driving," she says.
Doug Firman's generosity was well rewarded—Hodgson immediately took him on as her first driver. But he was her fiancé after all, so it would have been a bit odd to overlook him, especially as Hodgson's plan was to offer a double-man, double-shift service.
"I went to P&O Ferrymasters at Teesport and told them what I could offer. They grabbed it with both hands," says Hodgson. Doubling up means she and Firman can do the long runs and get them turned round in one day.
Soon they were hauling Ferrymasters' flatbeds, curtainsiders and tilts all over the country in their gleaming F8. But Hodgson knew that working on this basis with her fiancé was fraught with risk. "You've got to be very patient, otherwise you could end up scrapping. But I haven't kicked him out of the cab yet," she jokes.
After six months Hodgson bought her second vehicle, a one-year-old Volvo FH, and took on a second driver and a part-timer.
Ferrymasters was her main client, but in mid1997 she heard that Tilcon, the aggregates and ready-mixed concrete supplier, was looking for small hauliers. "I wrote and applied, but after six weeks I'd heard nothing," says Hodgson. "Then, out of the blue, they called and said they were interested
With a mixer supplied by Tilcon, Haulagelink started trucking ready-mix in a 30-mile radius from Tilcon's Middlesbrough depot. Five months later, the client asked Haulagelink to take on a second truck.
Lust 18 months after her company was founded, Hodgson had a fleet of six trucks, all Volvos except one of the mixers, a Foden 3300. Turnover had risen to £500,000 and business was booming.
"We've got about six or eight regular customers now," she says, "but Ferrymasters and Tilcon are the main ones." As the business grew, Hodgson found she could no longer run it from the back bedroom of her house in Thomaby; nor could she afford to spend as much time in the cab.
"When you're out on the road most of the time you don't want a rented office somewhere just standing empty but we quickly outgrew my back room," she says.
Haulagelink now has a rented office on the dock at Teesport, giving the business room to grow and providing somewhere suitable for meetings with clients. The vehicles are run out of a yard rented from another transport company, AV Dawson of Middlesbrough. "I don't need lots of facilities. I'm not a garage and I'm happy to have my vehicles serviced by a Volvo dealer," says Hodgson.
She now spends only about two days a week in the cab. "It's a pity, but if you want the business to expand you've got to spend time in the office and let others do the driving," she says. Haulagelink now has seven drivers on its books, plus one office administrator.
Hodgson has a clear idea of how her business is going to grow, and she's determined to make sure she doesn't put all her eggs in one
basket. "I don't quite want to be another Eddie Stobart," she says. "At some time I'll take time out to have a family, but for now the company takes first priority. In five years' time I want the business to have doubled in size and I want to have diversified a bit.
"John Prescott's doing a damn fine job putting people out of business—I want to get into other areas," she says. Last year Hodgson bought a tachometer analyser, a specialised piece of equipment rarely found in the offices of such a small operator. But she feels the L5,5oo cost is going to be worth it.
She explains: "It saves a lot of time. It can read a card in just four seconds, which means you're not tied up for ages, and you can get on with other work."
Potential
And she sees potential for offering a tacho analysis service for some of the owner-operators in her area. She is also training to be a Dangerous Goods Safety Advisor—every haulier will be required to employ one when legislation is introduced at the end of the year, and this is another service Hodgson thinks she can market to other operators.
Marketing is important to Hodgson_ She's hot on promoting her business and she's a stidder for maintaining a dean image. "Driving trucks is a collar-and-tie job now." Even so, she admits you have got to be tough: "That's OK, though, I've got a bit of a gob on me!"
This is neatly illustrated by an exchange which took place last year. Hodgson's success was recognised when she was shortlisted for a Woman of the Year award, organised by a glossy women's magazine. At the gala reception in Knightsbridge, another guest, immaculately dressed and glamorously made-up, asked Hodgson what line of business she was in.
"When I told her, she screwed up her face and said 'oh, what a dirty business!' So I said, 'you wouldn't be able to buy your fancy cosmetics if I didn't bring them to you'. "That shut her up."
• by David Taylor