Capital ambition
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WH Barley Transport & Storage in Milton Keynes has grown alongside the new town' it resides in By Chris Druce
MILTON KEYNES was created in 1967 with the ambitious design brief to eventually become a city in scale, comprising the Buckinghamshire towns of Stony Stratford, Wolverton and Bletchley.
Just three years later the haulage firm that we know today as WH Barley Transport & Storage was on the road in Wolverton. Since then, the haulage firm has grown and developed as Milton Keynes itself flourished to become a home for almost 250,000 people. WH Barley founder Peter Barber is certainly glass-halffull when CM meets him at the firm's Old Wolverton base, well aware that Milton Keynes's story of growth has
been a hugely beneficial one to have been a part of.
Turning 67 this year, Barber attempted to step back from the business in 2007 when he became chairman, appointing Steve Latchford as MD, but it is immediately apparent on meeting him that he is still hands on with the business. Indeed, he became national chairman of the Road Haulage Association in April (succeeding recent CM guest editor Richard Fry).
The credit crunch of 2007 was, remarkably, the first time in the business's lifespan that it had to make redundancies. "It was the first recession that I have suffered because Milton Keynes has always been growing more than the outside areas," he says.
"It was a learning curve. We laid about 10 people off; in the workshop, warehouse, as well as some drivers. Business for us didn't fall off a cliff, but it did get knocked going into 2009. You have to make yourself leaner — I thought we were lean enough after Maggie Thatcher's day — so we cut down, started on the sales side and pushed that and we are stronger now than we were."
These days the fleet is 39-strong, with an 0-licence extending to around 50 vehicles. It starts at 7.5 tonnes, and the entire fleet is curtain-sided. However, there's been a conscious shift up in terms of weight with 12-tonners replacing the 7.5-tonners.
"Euro-5 and -6 have made them so heavy that you can't get a 3-tonne payload on them with a tail-lift fitted. You used to have 18ft 75-tonners; now it's 20ft 12-tonners and you can get 6-tonne payload on them so it's much more economical and you can send them down to London from here and it's still worthwhile. They can get in and out much quicker," says Barber. "You still need 75-tonners for some of the weight restrictions on roads these days though."
WH Barley's fleet was all Daf once but now there are quite a few Mercedes-Benz (18and 26-tonne Axors) and more recently MANs.
During the last two to three years it's been MAN's turn, which Barber says is "looking after us very well". He has taken an 18-tonne, a 26-tonne and a number of tractor units from the manufacturer.
"The dealership is unfortunately in Northampton, but I knew Transport Association members who were running them and had given them good reports. Mercedes started to be more expensive and MAN was offering some good prices — there is also an independent in Buckingham that can do some of the work.We do our own maintenance — six-weekly and eight-weekly inspections [for respective truck types]."
WH Barley tends to opt for hire purchase deals on a threeto five-year term and, he says, with things so cheap at the moment "you might as well have a five-year deal".
"Some of the accountants like to see it off book, but perhaps I'm a little old school. Still, if you did have to get out of the vehicles you could do that a lot easier than with a leased deal. Overall, it's a better way to spread the cost as long as you can keep doing it, so year-on-year as you have [older trucks] falling out the bottom."
Barber has bought a tranche of new Euro-5s as his solution to the looming Euro-6 deadline — pushing back a trailer bulk purchase as a consequence — as the £10,000 premium on the Euro-6 models means he won't be rushing to buy them anytime soon. Centre of the universe "We're fortunate as Palletline [the company's pallet network] is only local, so the older vehicles get moved there. As Milton Keynes is the centre of the universe, none of the fleet is doing huge distances. We keep the WH Barley team
Key people at the firm include Steve Latchford, MD; Peter's wife and company director, Karen Barber; Glen Day, financial controller; Don Ruby, operations manager; Simon Reynolds, traffic office manager; and Alex Newman, HR manager. Emma Barber, Peter's daughter, is working her way through various key areas of the operation, recently marketing and now IT, to give her the grounding required to succeed Peter.
trucks for six years if we can, although sometimes we run them on longer. We've got some rigids doing eight years now, still looking good and not causing us major problems," says Barber. WH Barley Transport got out of international haulage in the 1980s as "for the hassle and profit we got back, it wasn't worth it", although runs to Ireland are still part of the overall picture. Groupage remains the haulier's mainstay. Almost everything is palletised, although there is some de-stuffing of containers. Customers include those in "packaging, machinery, it's very across the board, which is handy as if someone suffers a dip, someone else doesn't'; says Barber. "We have large and small customers — probably 250. Some we see a lot of, some we see only a few pallets from but it's served us well over the years as opposed to going to just a few [large] customers." Palletline work makes up around 40% of total volumes, around 400 pallets from the 1,000 the haulier will move
on an average day, but Barber and his team are always looking for other opportunities. "I feel pallets is heading the way parcels did. Everyone is chasing for volumes and pushing the prices down, which is exactly what happened to the parcels sector in the 1990s," he says.
There is, according to Barber, far more full-load work in and around Milton Keynes than there's ever been, although there remain "stupid rates not worth getting out of bed for". Nevertheless, it's an area of interest and the haulier is looking at an opportunity that would require it to add more tractor units to its fleet, although it would likely offer the relative security of a three-year contract. Another service that the haulier is about to offer is for an existing pharmaceuticals customer that wants to target the likes of private individuals via the internet. This will see WH Barley picking goods in far smaller quantities than it has to date to send out as a parcel rather than pallet service. Irrespective, business is good with 72 employees on the payroll and forecast turnover of ibm this year, with profit expected to be north of a quarter of a million The Milton Keynes Partnership is now working towards a new phase of development that could see the new city reach 350,000 people by 2031, promising a bright future for residents, local businesses and WH Barley alike. • As Milton Keynes is the centre of the universe, none of the fleet is doing huge distances. We keep the trucks for six years if we can" Once, this was all fields 1 was picking up more work from the local businesses and I thought I enjoyed that more than dealing with the wholesale side of things" Long before artist Liz Leyh created Milton Keynes' concrete cows, Barber's family ran a retail business in Wolverton, which later expanded into wholesaling, becoming WH Barley Wholesale. A contract to supply fruit and veg for school meals in Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire saw three vehicles acquired. However, the drivers didn't have anything to do in the school holidays, so Barber went out and found transport work running for a printer in Wolverton and a cigarette-filter manufacturer in Bletchley to fill the gap. "I was picking up more work from the local businesses and I thought I enjoyed that more than dealing with the wholesale side of things." At the age of 25, Barber went it
alone as a transport business (still supplying his family's firm, which dropped wholesale and kept with retail). As he'd already built up a reputation trading under the Barley banner (his mother's maiden name) he kept it, adding Transport. His 'fleet' consisted of a Bedford KM, Ford D16 and Pantechnicon, with a flatbed Ford Transit. Pre-O-licence, the initial operation was somewhat unorthodox by today's standards. "I was working out of the local council car park [Wolverton]. It was an open car park and the former site of the technical college that had burnt down," says Barber. A rented site in Newport Pagnell was followed by a bought "fixer upper" that was a fire damaged mill across the road, before premises just off junction 14 of the M1 were snapped up in the early 80s near the village of Moulsoe. WH Barley moved to its current site in 1994.