Running any business in today's climate is always going to be tough. We all have a tendency to put more and more hours in when things get leaner, but I have a theory that it's not the quantity but the quality of time and how it's used that is essential.
Indulge me for a moment while I transport you back in time to an era when i was running my own trucks and indeed driving one of them. Yes, I drove trucks and they were the largest available to the UK roads today without special requirements and were weighed in at 44 tonnes each. I was contracted on general haulage, a hard task in itself as I was supposed to work all week and fuel my truck at £1350 a week and pay my two other guys their weeks wage and fuel THEIR trucks for at least 3 months BEFORE I got paid.... recipe for poor business? too damn right it was but if its all you think you are good at then you have nowhere else to go and you just keep fighting it. Anyway I digress.
One day I was sent to an RDC (retail distribution centre) run purely for the biggest supermarket in the country (every little helps) and on entering the site (at an allotted time or you are denied entry) I was told to wait. So I waited. Oh.... and I waited. In fact I waited almost 3 hours before a guy in a fluorescent jacket waved me over to an unloading bay, which coincidentally had been empty for almost the same time and was told to reverse my truck on to that bay, which I duly did. I gathered my tickets and locked my truck and went to the main office, on entering (you guessed it) I had to wait, another 15 mins past and a guy says "I want your keys please" as he poked his head through a frosted window type hatch, there upon he took my keys and paperwork and shut the hatch.
And there I was... nothing to eat or drink (all in my truck) nothing to read, just a waiting room. I sat there for 1 and a half hours until i was called to the frosted glass window in a "Wizard of Oz" type grumpf manner and given my signed tickets back and oh yes... my truck keys.
This whole episode had taken 5.5 hours out of my day. I had met a guy at security,a guy to show me to which bay and a guy to take my tickets, who sat in an office with 12 other staff.
Now anyone in haulage will tell you we have a device called a tachograph, it records the amount of time you are on duty and how much time you are driving. We are allowed 15 hours on duty, (not driving) and even that is restricted further with the advent of the WTD (working time directive) so all in all (every little helps) had ensured i had lost almost half my day through waiting around to get unloaded, costing me a vital load and income for my family.
So the following day i was sent to an Eastern Counties dockyard to collect water for a well known German competitor (every little helps 'cos it's packaged cheaper) and i duly arrived somewhere around Swindon way to their distribution centre.
On driving into the unloading area i noticed one security guard in an office, he looked at my tickets and waved me through. I watched as other trucks that had been in my queue just reversed onto the bay, so i asked when would it be ok for me to do so?, the driver next to me said "if you see an empty bay just reverse up to it and get your load off!". Not needing to be asked twice after the previous days hold-ups i backed the truck on a bay and walked in to the warehouse.
On walking through the door i saw drivers using pallet trucks to unload their goods and only one guy at a huge desk. I approached him, he collected the tickets shouted "Bay 22" and i duly returned to my truck and unloaded 26 pallets as fast as my little legs could carry me. On completion of the unload i went back to the guy, he sent a runner to count my pallets, signed my ticket and i was outta there. Time taken? 45 minutes.
If you want to know why (every little helps 'cos its packaged cheaper) are growing so fast then there is a lesson to be learnt by the bigger guys here. It isn't that their food or goods are cheaper, far from it the vast majority is excellent standard, it's because they get the damn stuff to our plates cheaper!. In fact what drove me to actually write this was listening to two local ladies having a conversation while waiting for us to fit tyres to their cars, when asked about shopping at (every little helps 'cos it's packaged cheaper) the one woman said "The big supermarkets are doing budget brands but they are exactly that, they are budget and taste horrible mostly, whereas in (every little helps 'cos it's packaged cheaper) you may pick it up off a pallet, but the quality is still very acceptable for what you are paying". I have to say it was her view and her view alone but it should give any wise CEO some food for thought..(excuse the pun).
The moral of this story is never let your standards to your customers drop because you want to make goods cheaper. Better to look at cutting costs at the distribution end by streamlining the process and the number of staff needed to carry out that process than let quality slip on the aisles.
As for my exploits behind the wheel?. Well i tried to hold on as long as i could and in the end the price of fuel and falling rates left me almost penniless. It will take my business another 3 years to get the spectre of haulage off my back as i chose to fight back rather than go bankrupt, something you will rarely ever hear anyone in business say or admit to, quite simply because its not the done thing, but i consider it the right thing to do to stand my ground. I have known tough times indeed over these past 2 to 3 years and that will continue for at least another 18 months yet, i see huge firms struggling to get to grips with a changing economy that demands the right product at the right price, a statement the slow to change big guys out there would do well to heed, changes made at ground level can have a huge impact on what happens on the shop floor.
If only government could mirror the (every little helps 'cos it's packaged cheaper) way of delivering services to the country.
