View from the Hills Building up a transport business at
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a time when many are struggling may seem brave, but ifs a task that James and Gary Hill of Newport, Gwent, have managed Tired of driving for other people, brothers James and Gary Hill put their heads together in May 2006 and purchased a couple of used Dafs to start their own business: Jaga Brothers Transport.
"I did my best to talk them out of it because of the hard work I'd been through," laughs their father Desmond, who was a small fleet operator himself a decade ago.
"I put various 'what if' scenarios to them, but they were determined to go ahead and equally determined that they could find their way around whatever problems might spring up."
At that time no one had any idea of the looming economic storm that would finish off many businesses both inside and outside transport, and for the first six months things went well: so well, in fact, that another truck was added to the fleet. There were now three trucks and four trailers, running predominantly on steel work out of South Wales.
The following January, the brothers' business was at a crossroads: there was a big contract on offer with a steel company, but they would need a fleet of eight vehicles to handle it.
Gary says: "At that point we got mum and dad to come in with an injection of capital, we took the contract, and although the company we were working for then subsequently left the UK market, we were able to obtain more work with Tata, and have never looked back. We expanded through the recession, and now run 15 trucks and 30 trailers."
Desmond adds a note of caution, however: "Expand too fast and you destroy your cashflow."
Steel carriers Steel out of South Wales remains at the core of the Newport business. Some steel, of types not produced locally, is also brought back into the area.
There's a diversity of trailers in the fleet, including flats and curtainsiders, as well as the specialised steel carriers, which are manufactured and where necessary reconditioned by A Hingley Transport — the West Midlands company that is a leading steel carrier in its own right (CM 20 June). "Most of our trailers have coil wells, though," says James, indicating that steel is still where the company's core business lies. As a relatively small company working for a huge multinational, Jaga Brothers can only hold its position by doing everything right.
At the time of CM's visit in mid-May, Jaga had completed nearly 650 deliveries for Tata in the year to date, with no failures.
"It's your attitude to health and safety and the accuracy of your deliveries that determine whether you can work for Tata, not your size," Gary explains.
It's all thanks to the drivers Drivers play a key role in this, and the Hills are adamant they have the right team. "We don't track the vehicles, you have to be able to trust your drivers to do the job properly, and we stay in touch by phone," Gary says. "They have to be prepared to be away for four nights a week, but we still have pretty much the same drivers now as when we started."
Jaga is implementing the Driver CPC programme, and in typical Jaga style, this is being done with a minimum of fuss. "The training is done on Saturdays," Desmond explains. "We pay for it, but the drivers do it in their own time. It's being done by Driver Management Training Services, which also does our tachograph analysis. We've done one module so far and are scheduled to two more this year, then the final two before September next year. The first one we did was tachographs and hours. The drivers seemed to get quite a lot from it: they were all asking questions and I think they all learned something."
As much training as possible There's more training going on in the office, too: James and Gary's sister Alex is two years into an accountancy qualification. "When I qualify, we will be able to do more in-house and reduce external costs," she explains. "We've already moved payroll in-house, for example."
Another example of the Hills' commitment to quality is the decision to switch to ATS Euromaster as tyre supplier, with Michelin as the brand of choice.
"We knew Michelins were the most expensive, but our experience of the first vehicles to change indicate James and Gary Hill with that they have already outlasted two sets of what we Andrew Stevens, sales were using before, so they are more cost-effective," director at local Daf James says. dealer Watts Truck and And that sums up the whole attitude at Jaga: price Van, where the brothers isn't as important as performance. • buy their trucks