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176 
HAGANS TRANSPORT
Page 42
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Except for a few small boats, Hayle Harbour is surprisingly quiet. The tide is out, which has left a sandy bank between the water and the Atlantic Ocean. St Ives is a stone's throw to the west. "This little port lands most of the shellfish caught in Cornwall," points out Dennis Hagan, joint managing director of Hagans Transport. A viaduct a few hundred feet behind us is testimony to this town's industrial past. "It used to be a major port," he adds.
Small pieces of metal on the ground remind us of this industrial history. Steelworks used to stand on the site, and the rise and fall of the steel industry had a direct impact on Hagan's business, too.
He specialises in producing concrete blocks. 'We make 40,000 of them a day," he says. "We've just bought a £105,000 block machine."
He, along with his brother Terry, runs 11 trucks: four concrete mixers and seven rigids which are used to drop the blocks at customers' premises. The firm is split into two segments: Western Blocks, which makes the concrete blocks, and Hagans Transport, which delivers the blocks to the customers. All vehicles bear the livery of Western Blocks. This is a textbook own-account operation, although over the years things have been different.
It started life in the mid-seventies, but, as Hagan explains, the situation altered. "There was no construction in the late 1970s, so the block business went downhill. We were running rigids, but we sold them and changed the fleet to artics." He was forced to lay the concrete block workers off. "We concentrated on general haulage, but the company was still losing money."
Hagan complains that his clients were setting the rates. "The customers were calling the shots. The problem is, if you don't do it, somebody else will; that is how it works."
The Hagans were running 40ft flats to haul steel, but the steelworks shut down in the early 19805. At that point, the construction sector recovered. After the affair with general haulage, Hagan got rid of the flats and re-entered the world of own-account transport and concrete block manufacturing.
Twenty years on, and after experimenting with the often topsy-turvy world of hire or reward, the Hagan brothers most certainly know which side their bread's buttered on. Concrete blocks are supreme. "We deliver them within a 30-mile radius," says Hagan.
'We charge 36p for a concrete block; they cost a lithe bit more than other companys' blocks, but the customers like our service. If we say we will turn up on a Thursday afternoon, then they know that we'll be there." Delivery is priced into each 36p block, so it's important that the trucks perform. All the rigids are equipped with truck-mounted cranes.
"I would have liked a smoother passage over the years, but it wasn't to be," says Hagan philosophically. But now he knows where the firm's core lies.