Cranleigh Freight Services Company Profile
Cranleigh Freight Services celebrates its 25th birthday this year and is "proud to have got where it is, " says MD Julie Phillips.
Justifiably so, for the company is not just surviving, but thriving. Turnover leapt from £8m (€13m) to £12m (€19m) last year, led by home delivery, which now accounts for 35% of business, and international contracts.
Marking the anniversary, two out of the three new 18-tonne Mercedes curtainsider trucks which joined the CFS fleet earlier this year were painted in silver. The vehicles deliver pallets into the overnight Pall-Ex network for which CFS, a founder member, feeds up to 100 pallets a night.
The striking livery, suggested by a driver, appropriately matches Pall-Ex's own colour scheme.
Two years ago, Phillips told IFW that domestic business was outgrowing international. So what prompted the turnaround? "We have recognised that we have a place in a saturated market, " she says. "We're trying to bring in greater efficiencies while still focusing on what we're good at. We are a close-knit family business, and pride ourselves on our customer care." Dutch carrier Martinair perhaps demonstrates better than any other client the benefits of longterm relationship building. After taking export consignments to Amsterdam for many years, CFS started looking after import traffic last year.
Flowers flown from Kenya, which Martinair is unable to tranship direct to Stansted, are now brought into a Basingstoke wholesaler on refrigerated trailers three times a week.
For another client, monitor and projector manufacturer Viewsonic, Phillips even talks about being cost-competitive on intra-European traffic – a rare expression of confidence, given UK operators' usual gripes about disproportionate operating costs. "We were bringing their equipment into the UK and they liked what we were doing, " she says. CFS is now carrying up to 500 pallets a month between Rotterdam and Scandinavia for Viewsonic and hopes to expand its service into central and southern Europe.
"As a UK haulier, it's easy to say we're the poor relation, " says Phillips. "We just have to make sure we can add value for the client. We're not just offering 'if we get it by five, we can deliver by eight'. We go and say, what do you want?
"We've got to be more efficient year on year, and that's why we are trialling LPG vehicles, for example. But if you can't manage cost cuts, you have to sit with the client on an open-book basis and say, this is why. It's no use complaining that times are hard, or the Europeans are doing this.
Explain why you need your 3%. It can work if you've got the management skills to back it up." The success of its home delivery operation is a testament to CFS's ability to keep not just the customer satisfied, but the customer 's customer.
The company carries out most of MFI's deliveries, and the client's Aldershot distribution centre switched fully over to CFS last October after previously using what Phillips calls "a man and a van" for half this work.
There are minor aspects of home delivery that mean a lot to the recipient, she points out. "The biggest problem is the psychology. You're delivering to someone's 'castle', and the public's perceptions and expectations are very different between one retailer and another.
"The guys take care to unpack in the right room. They put covers over door frames and slippers on their feet. We're getting into assembly too. A separate crew come round by car for that, because you don't want a big delivery truck in the road." This second team are also responsible for audit – establishing that "Mrs Jones is happy with what she received, " as Phillips puts it. "We see this as part of the value-adding process. Home delivery is very labour intensive and competitive, but customers will pay if the service is there.
You can get it right or very wrong." The increasing requirement for hauliers to deliver just-in-time has meant serious players have had to re-invent their systems and invest heavily in new equipment. CFS has invested £1.25m (€2m) in its fleet over last year, taking delivery of 40 Mercedes 7.5 tonners for MFI deliveries, as well as the two Mercedes 18-tonners for Pall-Ex and two cooler trailers in Martinair livery.
"We've gone a long way to ensure our market spread is as wide as possible. If you get the right products, you can iron out the peaks and troughs, " says Phillips. "January to April is the peak in home furnishings. In summer, you can be delivering lawnmowers, garden equipment and conservatories, then beds in winter!" But there is much more going on across the business, in terms of enhancing the service as much as recruiting new customers. The company is diversifying into air and sea freight forwarding.
Track and trace, already available in the UK, will be extended internationally and will be brought into real-time by the end of this year, Phillips promises. "That will make a big difference to us. We will be ahead of the marketplace in communications terms."
