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Richard Teager
• Boosting National Carriers Ltd from the inheritor of a £20m annual loss to a profitable trading company in four years has been an uphill slog, but for some it has also been a stimulating challenge. One of these is Richard Teager who, at 49, will succeed Harry Kinsey as managing director in August and who has already committed himself to continuing at least one vital Kinseyan occupation — visiting 100 NCL depots a year to see it all happening at first hand.
Richard Teager is not one of the exrailwaymen who are still numerous in NCL; although he entered the business when it was still BR Sundries Division he did so at former m.d. Peter Land's suggestion because he knew it was to become a separate entity. And he was looking for broader pastures in which to flex his mental muscles after 20 years mainly in management services posts.
When Loughborough-born Richard Teager left university it was as an economist, to join British Celanese. There he produced market trend reports {such as one which became known intriguingly as "Teager on Wider Women") but also became rapidly convinced that transport and distribution deserved to be regarded as an extension of production. He found few supporters then, but now on the other side of the fence he is gratified by industry's current preoccupation with distribution.
A move to Courtaulds, then to BTF1, enabled him to gain experience in production planning, inventory control and total distribution, but he was looking for an opening in real executive management when the Peter Land suggestion came along. Both he and Harry Kinsey became assistant general managers of Sundries Division, Mr Teager following Mr Kinsey as a director and then assistant m.d. of NCL.
A quiet, courteous family man with a dry humour just below the surface, a music lover and motoring enthusiast, Richard Teager is not the type to make rash claims but it amuses him to stick his neck out occasionally. "We're going to win that Lorry Driver of the Year competition, you know", he said as I was leaving. "Perhaps not this year, but soon." An opinion not lightly to be dismissed: he won the NCL's truck driving contest for
managers last year. B.C.