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5/1/17 COMMERCIAL MOTORCOMMERCIAL MOTOR 5/1/17
36 PROFILE FORWARD TRUCKING SERVICESImages:TomLee
Fast
After nearly 50 years in business Forward
Trucking Services knows its own mind, and
doesn’t run with the pack on industry trends
By Ian Norwell
forward
OPERATIONS
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2. PROFILE FORWARD TRUCKING SERVICES 39
5/1/17 COMMERCIAL MOTORCOMMERCIAL MOTOR 5/1/17
“We had a disparate fleet of various brands and
ages. They were costing us in maintenance, and
increasing business meant we had to sort it out”
38
Training
FTS now employs 53 drivers and it’s apparent that it is looking for more. We saw
an advert on the fence with night trunk jobs on offer. Drivers here are mostly in
their 40s and 50s, with some older hands adding depth. As far as the Driver CPC
goes, Samuel is pretty disheartened. “It’s a box-ticking exercise with no quality
standards, and it doesn’t speak well for our industry,” he says. “What use is a
training qualification where you can sign in and fall asleep?”
FTS plans to trial the FTA training scheme when its current Driver CPC contract
expires. Samuel says: “As far as Brexit goes, we can’t see the Driver CPC
disappearing. In fact, if the UK had put it together instead of Brussels, it would
probably have been a better qualification altogether, with a pass-or-fail
philosophy, and it would have had more credence.”
Recently, FTS introduced its own Good Driver scheme, with bonuses for the
best performers. It monitors accidents, customer complaints and legal
infringements. Accidents have gone down since it was introduced, and Samuel
says that if it translates into lower insurance premiums he will add the savings to
the bonuses awarded. When FTS gets a new WebFleet system from TomTom
installed, it will be able to track driver fuel performance too, and that will become
the fourth element of the scheme.
At present, even though it broadly operates a one-truck-one-driver policy, it has
a big night-trunking operation and tracking who’s where is an uncertain science.
WebFleet will correlate with drivers’ tachograph cards, and will also give it
geo-fencing to alert traffic office staff when a driver might be about to incur a fine
for transgressing a weight limit.
FAMILY HAULAGE AND logistics companies have an
edge.They are usually passionate about their businesses,
and when their elder statesmen retire, their wealth of
knowledge is just a phone call away if a second, or even
third, opinion is needed. Forward Traffic Services (FTS)
was set up in Islington, north London by George Mackay
snr in 1968, running steel and concrete paving all over
London.Though there were no Fors or Clocs in those
days, the company migrated further north to Watford and
then Luton as it expanded. It is now based just inside the
M25, two miles north of Radlett, Hertfordshire.
The founder retired in the 1980s, with his namesake
George Mackay jnr stepping back from operations in
2005. He’s the knowledge at the end of the phone.
FTS has seen truck brands come and go, with a roll-call
of 1960s and 1970s metal, many now history.Albion,
Scania, Scammell, Foden, Spanish Dodge, Seddon
Atkinson, Ford, Daf and Volvo – they’ve all made a
contribution to FTS’s expansion.The Traffic in its name
was dropped in favour of Trucking, and the extra demands
of an expanding Forward Trucking Services fleet,
customer base and 63 employees, was addressed by the
appointment of Barry Simmonds as general manager in
1996, now MD.
Three strings
Today, most operations have more than one string to their
bow, unless it is a niche specialist. It insulates them from
the vagaries that might affect any particular sector.
FTS has three.
A general haulage division is the core of its operations,
but the expansion of the pallet networks – it is part of
Palletways – led to FTS Logistics’ formation. String three
is an events logistics division, which moves exhibitions,
music tours and festivals into place. Much of that business
takes FTS into Europe, with Madonna’s ‘Sweet and
Sticky’ tour committing FTS to 27 European dates.
Commercial manager Pete Samuel says the older
drivers tend to gravitate towards this work. He says:
“Their depth of experience is valuable, and I’d be taking
nothing away from our younger lads if I said that older
drivers are probably the most competent.”
The three divisions have different fleet needs, so the
FTS yard has an almost top-to-bottom range of vehicles.
With 33 tractors and 45 trailers, they are the mainstay of
the general haulage operation, using flats, dry-box and
double-deckers, with the ubiquitous curtainsiders on
pallet work. But there’s a fleet of rigids too, and FTS is at
least partly bucking the trend. It has a number of
18-tonners, but its pallet delivery work in London has it
reaching for the good old 7.5-tonner, and it remains
indispensable, says Samuel.
“For a lot of the places we deliver, especially in London,
an 18-tonner is too unwieldy.There are also too many
width and weight restrictions; they seem to be increasing
by the day.”We’ve heard the 7.5-tonner is becoming a
marginalised species, but not here – FTS will be getting
more as access continues to get tougher. So what about
the big stuff; is it a mix of brands like it used to be?
Not now, says Samuel.“In the last 18 months we’ve
embarked on a fleet renewal programme with an initial
£1.5m investment.We had a disparate fleet of various
brands and ages.They were costing us a lot in
maintenance, and increasing business meant we had to
sort it out.”That shake-up has brought MAN TGS 440
OPERATIONS
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3. PROFILE
COMMERCIAL MOTOR 5/1/17
Maintenance
The rising tide of the R&M contract hasn’t lapped over the doorstep of FTS. Its
23 shiny new Euro-6 MANs are maintained by its own workshops, and although
MD Barry Simmonds doesn’t brandish the spanners himself, his background as
a mechanic and technician gives him the confidence to say ‘no’ to the
blandishments of R&M from truck dealers.
Samuel says: “Barry’s knowledge is really important here. For example, he
knows what we should be paying for a clutch and what mileage it should be
going in. He can also spot poor dealer work. It’s broader than that though.
Maintaining them ourselves gives us an insight into each truck’s health and
service record. Any chassis with a poor showing on component failures – they
can pop up in the best-run fleets – will be at the top of the list for moving on
when it has three years’ work behind it, and the warranty runs out.”
FTS’s refusal to take the easy way out and go for R&M is another trend-
bucking approach, and we have to applaud its refusal to take the line of least
resistance. Operating country-wide, it has several other operating bases
elsewhere in the UK, working co-operatively from customers’ premises with
further technician support.
40
tractors into the fleet, and Samuel says they are paying for
themselves already.“We had Dafs,Volvos and Renaults,
so it had slowly grown into a bit of a mishmash.They
were ageing, with a lot of seven-year-olds still working.” It
looks like the brands weren’t the issue; it was the age.
Samuel tells us that the pitching from the truck makers
was interesting, and as usual it came down to a willing
attitude, with some truck makers not prepared to even
quote unless there was an R&M contract in the glovebox
(see panel). MAN came up trumps, and with the TGS
tractors delivering big improvements on fuel, it could be
in there for the long haul. Samuel says the MANs on the
night trunk might only be grossing around 28 tonnes, but
they are returning up to 13mpg.The TGS’s hauling
double-deckers at 44 tonnes are still managing up to
11mpg. Both figures are a massive uplift on the older
chassis in the fleet. Environmentalists who say trucks
haven’t improved their fuel economy in the past two
decades (CM comment 29 September), take a telling.
As for trailers, with the mix of superstructures, FTS has
reluctantly standardised on Schmitz Cargobull. It’s a great
product, it says, but it would have preferred to use
home-grown trailers. Lead times and cost sadly ruled
them out. Krone and Montracon also feature.
Working in the big city
Much of FTS’s work inevitably runs down to the capital
and the company is Fors-accredited. Samuel says:“We are
happy with our bronze compliance.Attaining silver
seemed a bit superfluous because we would need to
install Clocs equipment that would need to be turned off
to comply with night-time noise regulations. Our night
drivers seldom see a cyclist anyway.” He didn’t feel like
spending considerable sums of money on equipment that
would not be used, and pay extra for a switch to disable it.
Its European operations led to its Border Force Civil
Penalty Accreditation, a qualification you don’t see often.
FTS has expanded to the point where it needed expertise
from outside the family.It has chosen its appointments well,
diversified to take advantage of the pallet revolution,
and got creative with the events division. ■
OPERATIONS
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