Ok fella’s here is a short tale about when Duke’s started doing groupage distribution work 
Bertie Marshall came over to interview me in Feb; 1980 the deal was the company was starting up UK groupage distribution and was planning to open a whse/depot in Manchester (actually on Stakehill Ind Est;) and needed to recruit drivers and whse staff to take the project forward. I started for them in the March and initially was invovled dropping off outgoing trls; and picking up incoming trls at Stranaer and bringing them down to Stakehill for unloading and onward distibution throughout the NW, NE and the Midlands by the few rigid vehicles that were originally based there. When I started for Dukes I was told that up until then most of the UK work had been ‘Unit Loads’ ie straight 1/2 droppers for the artics with the rigids based in Portadown doing the returnload distribution in the N & S of Ireland.
For the first couple of months I was always busy taking trls up to Stranraer and back with the odd distribution run in a rigid up to the NE thrown in somewhere inbetween 
And as this new service developed and expanded over the coming months and the daily trl; movement increased it was decided that a half a dozen drivers shoud be recruited in the Fleetwood & Kendal area to do regular changeover work to keep all the trls arriving on schedule 
Anyways this system seem to be working fine for quite a few months and our little whse at Stakehill was full of new Merc 1617 Boalloy Linkliner bodied rigids to cope with the massive increase of work. Times were good and the working atmosphere was even better 
By this time I had taken the NE run on full time and would usually be away from Mon to Frid with a turnaround at Stakehill Weds afternoon/evening then usually taking an 8hour break in the depot if necessary 
Things started to change when we were instructed not to accept ‘contents unchecked’ signatures from customers 
If they had any query with the packaging that could affect the contents then they had to check the contents there and then 
Most of my customers had no problem with doing this but some became very hostile to this small request Even when I explained that even if 1 item of their goods was missing from the delivery, after I had left, I would be blamed and be dismissed even though I knew I hadn’t stolen anything from their delivery and why would I want to risk my good paying secure job for the sake of a 20p paintbrush It always seemed to be these 2bit painters/decorators supplier’s wholesale shops that had previously got away with reporting discrepancies in their delivery and got paid out without question.
What I didn’t know at the time was that there was a big internal investigation going on as lots of customers stuff was being pilfered and as our customers in Ulster & Ireland included Lee & Lois Jeans, Ben Sherman Shirts, Northern Ireland Linens, Duvets & Pillows for all the John Lewis & Binns store’s and smallish items for Mothercare, MAKRO and the early Primark stores, it was adding up to a big wedge being stolen weekly and the company had to find out who was doing it and stop it ASAP
There was a regular delivery I did in North Shields that was always 100 boxes of Lee/Lois stuff and each box had an insurance value of £300.00 so that one delivery was valued at £30,000 and at the height of my work on this run I could be starting out with up to 60/70 delivery’s and at least 3 collections to do with either a midweek or weekend turnaround.
During the period of the internal investigation friendships at the Stakehill depot became very fraught as at least 3 lads got caught for ‘allegedly’ stealing and were fired off straight away and as usual the finger was pointing everywhere and as I was the only one at the depot who did nights away I never really felt part of the ‘day run lads little clique’. Jealousy about the job I had was evident, mainly because of all the extra tax free dosh I was earning and the weekend work I was getting and there were a couple of colleagues who were definetly trying to stab me in the back because of this, but as the internal investigation panned out and info filtered down to us mere lorry drivers it became obvious that the company itself had played a big part in allowing the pilfering to take place. 
It turned out that loaded trls leaving Portadown were always sealed and then if a changeover took place the drivers had to check that the seal was intact 
If so the trl was taken to it’s destination, groupage to Stakehill and the seal again checked at destination, if it was still intact everything was fine and trl was unloaded and the distribution vehicles did the end delivery. It was assumed that if the trl had been checked and signed off as ‘Load Intact’ and sealed at Portadown and had arrived at Stakehill with seal intact then the load could not have been pilfered. Ergo:- If the goods were then short at final delivery then only the Whse; staff at Stakehill or the final delivery driver could be held responsible
Now there was one big flaw in there thinking and I had to ring Bertie Marshall up and express my concerns that I could be under suspicion as a final delivery driver without one specific check being done throughout the supply chain
OK within a month the Fleetwood based drivers were gone and things were a lot easier and I was allowed to get on with my usual run
Can anyone guess what simple thing Dukes overlooked
I have quite a few more tales to tell about my time with Dukes and really look forward to relating the one about bringing down a ‘richard cranium’ depot manager who just happened to have been one of the ‘day run drivers clique’ earlier on in this tale
PS. just realised this short tale turned out quite long 
All the best for the New Year guys
Regards
Dave Penn;