Bye bye albion haulage

UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUMS OWNER AND FLEET OPERATORS FORUM (INTERACTIVE)
1

Thought I’d nick and adapt Goaty’s post announcing him winding up.

I’ll have been in business for 28 years next February, which quite surprises me as I just thought I’d get a van and see what happened. No plan, no thought other than it was far more fun working for myself than for someone else. Took some chances, took hold of one opportunity that came by and wrung the life out of it and from that came two depots and currently 25 staff.

Around two years ago the culture at my main customers started to change and it’s continued exponentially. As one of the long time employees said, it used to feel like a family, now I’m just a number.

Now I’m real old school, I think if you want to tell someone what to do, you need to have a solid understanding of the job. My TM and Ops manager used to drive for me before taking over the running of the Southern office and there’s no chance of getting anything by him. I might only have driven puddle jumpers, but I’ve been around the UK and Europe in my time. The customer used to have a similar approach, but now there are a lot of mid 20s people come in with their shiny business degrees but no real experience of life or work and now it’s all about jumping through hoops with a shed load of irrelevant data, policies, blah blah, which proves how well you do the job. I find this odd as we have a 100% delivery rate, barring weather, ferry changes.

There’s been a lot of issues, too many to go into, but when I told the two managers that I wanted to tell the Customer I wanted to quit, they both said I don’t blame you. They have both tired of the incompetence.

Staff have been told now and my competitors know something is happening. I’m hoping the staff will TUPE over and I’m being very accommodating with the Customer and giving advice on putting the tender together purely so I can hopefully steer them to one of the better suppliers, both in terms of professionalism and as someone that my lads will be OK working for.

It’s very hard to tell people that have worked for you for over 20 years that you have decided to go, but it would always happen one day.

No idea what I’m going to do next. Probably stupid enough to start again :unamused:

2

Can you explain that using KPI and graphs please?

Good luck in what you decide but I am like Duncan Bannatye.

I’m out

3

albion, I dont know whether to commiserate or congratulate you. a bit of both I suppose.
as you said you get a feel when thing’s just aren’t the way they were and never will be.

any way what ever you decide to do I wish you well also dont stop posting alway’s enjoy your humour.

4

albion:
Around two years ago the culture at my main customers started to change and it’s continued exponentially. As one of the long time employees said, it used to feel like a family, now I’m just a number.

now there are a lot of mid 20s people come in with their shiny business degrees but no real experience of life or work and now it’s all about jumping through hoops with a shed load of irrelevant data, policies, blah blah, which proves how well you do the job. I find this odd as we have a 100% delivery rate, barring weather, ferry changes.

good luck with your future plans or judging by the way you’ve worked Un-plans. :laughing:

You can be offer the best customer service ever, but to these pointy shoe types with their business degrees, they have been taught it all has to be quantified in hard figures, they don’t understand “unquantifiable soft data”, it’s the water cooler (or tea break in the UK) scenario, some mangers will see it as an unproductive situation as workers are stood around talking, but studies have shown that often the talk is work related and information is passed between workers that is useful for the business, you just can’t put a figure on it.

It’s not that I’m totally against Business Studies, done a fair bit of it myself when I went back to college in my 30’s and much of it made some sense, but I’d already had 15 years of work under my belt to compare it too, those coming out of University have loads of information but little experience relate it to and an ambition to make a name for themselves to further their career.

5

I am really sorry to hear that from somone I had come to see as the embodiment of good sense and a business ethos that was based upon the highest traditional moral core values. Those values which aim to make a profit out of providing a superior service to customers while at the same time seeing that the provision of employment is a responsibility not lightly undertaken, and which requires hard work to maintain a team upon which the business can rely. That team can only prosper with good two way communication and a thorough sense of fairness in all aspects of operation and conditions of employment. You seemed to have all that in abundance. How sad that today’s customers have become box tickers and jargon junkies with just the knowledge of the price of everything and the value of nothing. Haulage and Storage has become whatever pathetic, vomit-inducing exhibition of suit-speak these children can dream up.

I sincerely hope that when it comes to the final days you give these jumped up whizz kids a real piece of your mind, sufficient to make them wet their nappies when they hear just what useless oxygen wasters they really are.

6

I am so sorry to read your news.

I know exactly where you’re coming from as I closed my IT consultancy because I was sick of meetings and BS. Trouble was I came into haulage but at least I am just responsible for me now. :open_mouth:

I hope we are keeping you on here and can support you in whatever you decide to next

Your staff will miss you dreadfully, I’m sure, and the dogs will have shorter legs now their walk numbers will increase :laughing:

7

Never met you Albion, but always read your posts with glee, hope you fare well in your next adventure whatever it is.

Sapper

8

Surprising news Albion and I wish you well in the future. From your posts on TN you have built a business to be proud of. I think that your getting out at a good time, next year could be very difficult indeed for our industry. I know of two large family owned and well known transport companies where the owners are actively looking to sell, they have simply had enough of the job.

9

Good luck Mrs A :wink:

10

Thank you for your kind words. :slight_smile: .

I’ve nothing against business degrees, just when people come in with no experience, change a lot of things and then zoom off to their next step on the ladder, leaving chaos behind them. All things are cyclical and I view this as a time of excessive micro management. Things will change in time. I just don’t have the patience to wait!

And it will give me time to spend moderating trucknet :wink:

And it’s Miss, Daniel :stuck_out_tongue:

11

A similar thing resulted in my move to Canada, I was sick of all the BS and knew my long term future would be affected by my low tolerance for such things.

Because I’m not too bright I bought another lorry over here, despite my promise to myself that I wouldn’t, but I enjoy it more now.

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12

Congratulations on your decision, it must have been a hard one after 28 years of building your own business.

My wife and me went a few years ago back from a 15 truck company to a 2 truck company and told ourselves we should have done this 15 years ago.
Now my son will continue the company and I decided a few months ago to go and work as a driver for a big company and do a bit of europe again, and up to now, I love it.

albion:
No idea what I’m going to do next. Probably stupid enough to start again :unamused:

My wife threw a plate at me last week when I told her I was thinking of buying my own motor again to subcontract to my new employer, woman propably have the better judgement :wink:

13

See, reading NMM’s and bald’s posts, it’s like Royston Vasey, you can never really leave!

I may have to borrow Mrs bald for her plate throwing skills :stuck_out_tongue:

14

Yes miss :laughing: ,are you keeping your company car ,I mean van :smiley:

15

Of course, the dogs will still need their air conditioned comfort!

16

While I can’t say I’m surprised I’m still saddened to hear it. Reading some of your posts here and there about how much you pay your drivers and their work-related expenses I was thinking that your company simply wouldn’t be (deemed) “competitive” for much longer. I also agree with most of what the other posters have said before in this thread so I won’t repeat their words.

It sounds though as you were enjoying it all along so…

“Don’t be sad it’s over, be happy that it happened”

17

Good luck for your future and good luck to your drivers hope they get a decent deal out of it and don’t have to suddenly start looking for new jobs elsewhere.

18

Thank you ETS, oddly their decision to go out to tender has nothing to do with my charges. Overall I’m charging similar to other companies in my market, it’s just I don’t have a posh hour, big car and go on loads of holidays. Money has never been a motivator over and above what is comfortable.

I gave my notice in back in June because I couldn’t stand the corporate rubbish. They came back 6 weeks later saying if they watered down the corporate stuff, would I stay. Trouble is, they could never really water it down enough for me now they have changed their approach to suppliers, so I said enough.

Simcor, there are only a few players, so unless someone big decides to have a go at a start up, which has happened before, then it’ll be on five or six firms. Two of them I’ve already spoken to and will give assistance to if they decide to tender. Both of them would be fine for the drivers.

Currently there is no capacity in the market, with the timeline they have it would be very difficult not to take my drivers. You can’t go out and hire my type of vehicles or get an agency driver with the right qualifications. It takes 3 months before a new driver is earning/bringing a ROI.

The only reason I’m still staying around is to give my customer time to make arrangements and try to steer then in the right direction. Technically I don’t have to turn in tomorrow, which just shows how stupid they are. An essential supplier that’s turning in only because of their staff. That is a serious risk to their business.

19

albion:
See, reading NMM’s and bald’s posts, it’s like Royston Vasey, you can never really leave!

I may have to borrow Mrs bald for her plate throwing skills :stuck_out_tongue:

It’s a disease, there’s no known cure.

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20

Good luck Albion, I couldn’t stand the pointy-shoe wearers either, that’s what made me pack it in. The thing that done it for me was the experienced people buying into their ■■■■■■■■ when they could and should have just refused to.

It was some comfort though, to learn that about six months after I finished, the whole place was closed down and the various operations split into different locations of a global “logistics provider” no doubt with lots of KPI and RAG reports, produced by people specialising in the abuse of words like “issues” and “moving forward”…

That was nearly 20 years ago, I can only imagine how much worse it has got since.