KG Sewell Company Profile

Time is man’s ultimate master—a phrase as relevant today as it ever was. But for the past 21 years they are words that one company, Leedsbased KG Sewell, has tried its best to challenge. For as deputy managing director Gary O’Gara explains, the main work of the firm is just-in-time deliveries. “We distribute these primarily to car companies,” he says. “Delivering items such as wheels, fuel tanks and car carpets.”
O’Gara has been at the company for five years but is steeped in its history. The firm was formed in 1980 by Ken Sewell with a small fleet of tonners; it soon developed the niche which remains the company’smain distinction today. “The niche is sending flyers to the car companies,” O’Gara explains. “Car companies will call us in when they quickly need a new item to continue their production lines. Flyers are simply a shortage of supply or product or the failure of a tool. We get them there on time.”
This is an incredibly challenging area, given the range of KG Sewell’s customers.

Fuel tanks
KG Sewell delivers for the largest names. When it is not delivering wheels to Land Rover in Longbridge, it is supplying fuel tanks to Peugeot in Coventry, or to Jaguar in Liverpool, or even wheels for Aston Martins. It also distributes to plants in Germany and Spain as well as to Saab in Sweden. “You name the car company, we do it,” says O’Gara.
KG Sewell’s mixed core fleet of 62 vehicles and 6o drivers with a range of depots in Coventry, Martington, Staffs and Deeside cope with the flyer and ordinary just-in-time car part distribution work admirably, thanks to painstaking planning. For example, on flyers to the Continental plants vehicles will be double-manned.
“We have to manage these situations carefully and make sure that in these emergencies our drivers are properly rested and are not going to be in danger of flouting the hours rules,” O’Gara explains. “Only when two or three car companies call for flyers at the same time does the company have to hire in extra vehicles or resort to driver agencies.”
It is the Continental side of the business where O’Gara is celebrating the company’s latest suc
cess: a four-year contract with the plastics company Kautex Texton of Coventry which involves moving up to 10 loads a week to Cologne and four loads to Valencia. Products include engine parts and seat interiors. “We will also be moving raw materials and/or finished goods back from Cologne to the UK for Kautex,” O’Gara adds.
The present tremulous state of the economy, which includes deep concerns in car manufacturing, is not affecting KG Sewell, says O’Gara: “We have just had the busiest month I’ve seen for many a long day. In fact, the past six months have been tremendous.”
He is quite clear about the reason for the firm’s continuing success: “What we say, we do. In fact we have a motto on our vehicles
— ‘Who Cares Wins’! We are a family firm and therefore we can react quicker to proposals from companies than larger firms. The decision-making time is shorter.”

Golden pot
O’Gara explains that the secret is to provide quality of service, not the cheapest price: “There’s a saying which goes, ‘turnover is vanity, profit is sanity’. It’s simple. If there is nothing in the golden pot we are going nowhere.”
Hard work is another factor. O’Gara works with Diane Sewell, the managing director and daughter of chairman Ken, on a day-to-day basis. Their working days can, at times, last up to 14 hours. Diane looks after financial issues; O’Gara takes care of operational issues; with Ken keeping an eye on the operation as a whole.
“We also talk to our other managers on a day-to-day basis to find out who needs support and who has extra capacity,” O’Gara reports. “We sit up in our room in Leeds looking at computers and directing operations. The others joke to us that they call our room Cloud 9.”
The firm is flying now, but there was a time 18 months ago when things were looking much more earthbound.
“Everyone was suffering then with high fuel prices, rising insurance costs and prices for the Channel Tunnel increasing without warning,” he says. “We decided we had to take a step backwards.”

Whole board
The decision, taken by the whole board, was to jettison almost £1.5m worth of business:
“We had to reduce in size to stay in business. It was a hard, hard decision. But we looked at the business and took away the areas where we were not making money— one load a day to Paris for example. The firm has even stopped using the Channel Tunnel, apart from flyers to Europe, and now uses ferries to get across to the Continent.
This is an issue which raises O’Gara’s ire:
“We find that the average French company using the Channel Tunnel pays £150 each way—we pay £195 each way. Someone
please explain.” The firm is all too aware of other hazards on Continental trips. In 1998 one of its drivers, David Jackson, was held by the French authorities on suspicion of drug smuggling (CM 17 Sept 1998). “He was in jail for 13 weeks completely innocent,” says O’Gara. “We lost the vehicle and trailer for six months.”
Jackson is back working with Sewell and has returned to Continental work: “That’s the thing with the drivers who go to Europe. They love it so much.”
The range of the vehicles on the KG Sewell fleet has developed significantly over the years. Although a dozen 7.5-tonners are still in use the fleet is dominated by artics. The firm has 50 in total, a mixture of 32 and 40-tonners. Twelve of these are dedicated to Continental runs.
The company’s buying policy is easy enough to grasp: “We look at the best offers. We look at what is available. I don’t think there is a bad marque out there; that is why we have a mixed range.”
The firm also has also been expanding its range of activities—new jobs include trunking for Geodis and multi-drop deliveries for TNT—and further expansion is in the pipeline, O’Gara reports: “We are speaking to a number of potential clients at the
moment. Our turnover is now £5m, we are looking for £7m by the end of next year.”
The firm may also have to move to 24/7 offices to cope with the Working Time Directive. “If you work hard you get what you deserve,” he adds. Hard work isn’t confined to the office; after talking to CM O’Gara is off to Leeds University: “Myself and Diane are doing a course on financial management for the next eight months so we have to go two nights a week there.” You get the impression that they will take the extra work in their stride.”