Into Everything – Ryder company profile

Ryder is one of the biggest transport companies in the country – currently ranked thirteenth in Motor Transport's Top 100 listing. But although the firm is remembered more for its yellow rental vans than for its logistics it is in reality a major player in the logistics marketplace.

Now Ryder has started on a new policy to emphasise the range of its services. 'We offer a broad spectrum of services,' says Peter Backhouse, group operations director Europe. 'Now our sales people will be able to offer a complete range of services to meet our customers' needs. Everything is now integrated. We have the biggest range any one company can provide.' Ryder can boast a rental park of over 2,500 including vans, rigids and artics. It can provide contract logistics services and it can manage a fleet – including providing contract hire and leasing. It can also supply its customers with drivers and vehicles at peak times, or organise delivery and fitting of goods through Systemcare, its shared user home delivery operation.

The company will happily organise and provide your European distribution services, and it will even manage your O-licence for you… or you can just buy a used truck from it. This means that instead of just offering, say contract hire, Ryder can offer a mixture of services that best fits the needs of the customer, says Backhouse. 'It is not about specific services but about finding out what the customer needs, providing it and adding value.' To try to sum up the new range, Ryder has added a new line under its logo which reads Logistics and Transportation Solutions Worldwide!

Ryder's logistics services alone cover a wide range of services and industries. Automotive is a particularly strong area. Ryder works with Nissan, among others, providing parts directly to the production line, and has just won an award from the Institute of Logistics for this work. 'We have forged a close relationship with Nissan over the past ten years,' says Backhouse.

'We see the automotive sector as a global sector offering growth,' he says. 'We are now setting up hubs throughout the US and Europe.' Another growth area is home delivery, in which Ryder has won a contract with the supermarket Sainsbury's, covering more than 30 stores nationwide. 'We provide the trucks and the drivers and are representing Sainsbury's to their customers,' says Backhouse. This service is expanding rapidly across the UK. Another home delivery customer is Littlewoods which uses Ryder's Systemcare service. Under this service, Ryder's two man teams install and connect white goods, assemble furniture and remove old items of furniture and unwanted packaging. Systemcare handles around half a million deliveries a year from its national distribution centre in Derby. But customers do not have to use this shared user operation. For Sharp Bedrooms, for example, Ryder runs a dedicated home delivery service.

One thing Backhouse is certain about is what type of contract work he wants. 'We prefer to enter into high level contracts if we can add value,' he says. 'We do not want short term contracts where we cannot add something further. We have to add value to the end company.

'There are many different ways of operating. A customers existing operation can be absorbed, or we can manage it on a shared management basis,' he says.

Backhouse should know what the customer wants because he used to be group logistics director for Jewsons before joining Ryder three and a half years ago. 'It was an interesting change, a bit like gamekeeper turned poacher,' he recalls. While at Jewson he contracted out the logistics. 'I view things from the customer angle,- he explains.

A good example of adding value is its contract with British Airways to run all the ground fleet, initially for Heathrow and Gatwick airports, but now covering Manchester and Birmingham. This means that Ryder is responsible for around 7,000 vehicles and making sure that the service is available 24 hours a day, every day of the year. 'This business has been very successful for us,' says Backhouse.

Ryder's relationship with the Army goes back even further. It began providing and maintaining the vehicles for the Tank Transporter Regiment in Germany in 1987. In 1996 Ryder won a further contract, to supply, maintain, and manage 2,500 non military MoD vehicles also in Germany.

Ryder increasingly works on contracts which have a worldwide or European basis. 'We provide global logistics capacity,' says Backhouse. Ryder Logistics is certainly big – it reckons it has an annual global turnover of $1.8bn (£1.2bn) and serves customers such as Whirlpool, Xerox, and Hewlett Packard. The European head office is based in the Hague and it has a transport operation in Germany, as well as a fleet in Poland. 'We have not gone gung ho into Europe,' says Backhouse. This means it has avoided some of the expensive purchases made by other logistics companies. Instead it is concentrating on working with its customers to provide European-wide logistics. What makes Ryder different from other logistics companies? One factor is that it does not just concentrate on a few logistics markets but provides logistics to a wide range of companies. The other is its flexibility. It can start by just taking over maintenance work for a customer or providing vehicles for peak times, and then persuade that client into fully outsourcing its logistics services. 'We grow as our customers grow,' says Backhouse.

Key facts

Ryder has 20,000 vehicles under fleet management and contract hire and 2,000 vehicles on its rental fleet with a network of 30 centres around the UK. The fleet management services provides a wide range of options to hauliers to reduce the cost of running trucks.