More than 150 years after the family firm was founded, John Jempson and Son is to cease trading at the end of June and will transfer most of its 80-plus staff to XPO Logistics.
Good news for the employees that they’re not being put on the dole, but this is clearly the way the industry is going: Independent operators, even quite sizable ones with licences for 101 trucks, becoming part of these industry giants
Most of their work was for British gypsum out of Mountfield East Sussex so when XPO took over the haulage it was a matter of time
I wonder who XPO will merge with in the future to become an even bigger conglomerate craphole
As long as they don’t start doing boxes like the others ft
And the trend continues…
They have licences for 91 trucks and 92 trailers, so we can assume a similar number of drivers will now be looking for their next gig
It’s Friday, buy-one-get-one-free, this one closer to home for me
I think OPX had part of the Lidl contract for South Wales if I remember rightly.
I believe they’ve bought out Wincanton now as well
Just waiting on it being cleared if it hasn’t already
I used to socialise and sub work from the owner Graeme Howard. He was a tad “colourful “ with his methods to say the least 
Yeah, I can imagine the kind of things you mean 
Not a lot of polish on most of the operators around here, including the well-known multi-millionaire guys running bulk tippers
OPX seemed to be growing at a pretty quick speed.
Have the interest rates recently pushed a load of firms over the edge, or can you fix your loan rates up front generally in business?
Yes. You can can fix your loan rates easily in advance. Say, 10 years in advance would be perfectly reasonable. The trick is to look at the market and say, we’ve had 0.5% interest rate for a dozen years now, I’d like to pay 2 or 3% for the next 10 years instead of continuing to pay half a percent for goodness knows how long.
Equally the UK government could have fixed that extra £400Bn that they borrowed knowing that it would take a generation to repay, if it ever does at all together with the obvious result of spending it was to create massive inflation and interest rates to come. If only there was someone good with numbers at the helm (Rishi chancellor/PM?)
From comments I see in the industry press there seem to be several causes: interest rates are quite high on the list, but generally an increase in all overheads (standing costs and running costs) which is not balanced out by an increase in turnover.
Until you look into it more deeply most people don’t appreciate how small the profit margin is in transport, so economies of scale favour the biggest companies
Those with a more nerdy interest in the business side of haulage might like a shufty through this
What happened to the Jempson staff at Rye then? Where is the XPO depot ?