The Shore Porters’ Society: Making Vision A Shore Thing

Improving the safety of vulnerable road users has driven Aberdeen-based The Shore Porters’ Society to equip its fleet with cameras. Kevin Swallow talks to Richard Henderson about legislation and the challenge van operators present to the 522-year-old transport and warehousing business.

(ORINGALLY PUBLISHED IN JUNE 2020) 

Officially, the world’s oldest verifiable transport company is Gebrüder Weiss, an Austrian company and that dates back to 1474. Second is The Shore Porters’ Society in Aberdeen. It dates back to 22 June 1498, with reference in the Aberdeen borough records as being able to legally deal with “all imported and exported merchandise”.

James IV was into his 10th year as King of Scotland, it had been four years since the earliest record of whisky distillation at the Lindores Abbey monastery in Fife, and golf had already been first recorded in an Act of the Scots Parliament in 1457, during the reign of James II.

The Shore Porters’ Society began as a group of porters, who worked at Aberdeen Harbour charging one penny “Scots” for every item carried from the quayside and delivered within the borough. It formed, for employees” mutual protection, arguably the first ever cooperative.

“It is set up as a society by likeminded individuals to perpetuate a fund for the benefit of those who have retired from the society and for widows,” explained Richard Henderson, partner and office manager.

In 1666 it formed two trading units; the general haulage department (also known as the horse and van department) and the property and warehousing department. People join as partners and after 21 years of service qualify for a pension.

He added: “It remains that way today. Our retired and widowed members benefit from the storage income generated through an annual annuity.”

After joining in 1998, Richard left in 2008 for Grampian Police (later to become Police Scotland) rising to Sergeant before re-joining the company last year. As well as managing the 11 strong team in the office he is also in charge of transport alongside David McPherson (check spelling). Around 90% of the transport is the removal of household goods, office relocation, fine art, and antiques from and to anywhere in the world.

Through the centuries his forebears employed as “horsemaster” who oversees the horse and van department or general haulage and international removals department, had to deal with poor quality roads, tolls, theft and the amount of time it took to cover long distances. Richard’s challenges appear somewhat different; safety through the Transport for London’s (TfL) Direct Vision Standard (DVS), Scotland’s burgeoning Low Emission Zone (LEZ) and making van users adhere to the same operational standards as truck operators.

“In terms of the newly installed safety systems, from my time in the Police and having seen the potential injuries that can be caused to vulnerable road users, I see that it is incumbent on fleet operators such as ourselves to do all that we can in terms of safety measures, which will protect not only cyclists and pedestrians but our own drivers and vehicles,” he explained.

NEW REGS

TfL will issue the DVS as a mandatory safety permit for all lorries over 12 tonnes gross vehicle weight (GVW) to enter or operate in Greater London from 26 October 2020, but no enforcement will be introduced until the end of February 2021. To prepare, Richard is equipping the three Euro 6 trucks that are over 12 tonnes GVW on The Shore Porters’ Society fleet with cameras and equipment sourced from Brigade Electronics.

Each truck will be fitted with the VBV320C Select range flush mount nearside camera, VBV-770M Select range 7 inch digital LCD monitor, SS4100W Sidescan sensor system with mute function, and the connected to SS-BC08 12/24 Backchat with the “caution this truck is turning left” real speech warning alarm, and the MDR504G-500 MDR digital recording. Overall, the price tag per wagon is £3,500, with each vehicle fitted by Dingbro, who along with its subsidiary Taylor’s Auto Electrical, are Brigade Electronics partner covering Aberdeen for installations.

“Left turn appears to be the whole focus of the DVS scheme, with vulnerable road users being on the blind side of the driver, to prevent road traffic collisions. As a keen cyclist myself, I see why it is essential,” he accepted. “We wanted to fit the system and see how it works; we now have the capacity to increase the number of cameras.”

He has resisted fitting out the entire fleet, which includes a DAF X tractor unit and semi-trailer, CF prime mover wagon and drag with a tandem-axle trailer, 12 rigids between 15 and 18 tonne GVW, two 7.5 tonners and two 3.5 tonne Fiat vans.

CLEAN AIR

There are no plans to fit the systems to the Euro 5s on the fleet as they are not LEZ compliant in London or for Aberdeen when its LEZ is fully implemented. Instead, he’ll look to fit out new vehicles that join the fleet.

There is some respite with plans to implement Low Emission Zones across Aberdeen, as well as Dundee and Edinburgh in addition to Glasgow, paused temporarily in response to the Covid-19 outbreak, and with no alternative date yet proposed. When a date is anticipated diesel vehicle will need to be Euro 6.

“We discussed this with the local council last year,” he recalled. “Virginia Street will be a part of the LEZ in Aberdeen; there is a section that is dual carriageway. We own most of the buildings in the street, which are used as warehouses, so it will impact us incredibly badly. We will get hit every time we send out a non-compliant vehicle.”

Making the entire fleet Euro 6 compliant would require a very quick fleet replacement programme, which would be too expensive, he argued. Using alternative routes through the city to the warehouses avoiding the proposed LEZ areas, Richard felt, would “impact on other parts of the city”, something the council wouldn’t want as a side effect of introducing a clean air zone. “We couldn’t move, these are listed buildings that have been built by the Society, they are synonymous with us,” he added.

Vehicles are bought, often with finance, and are assets on the company’s books rather than leased. Richard explained that there are some fleet replacements in the offing. “We operate a tandem axle box van trailer, which is due to be replaced. We will go like-for-like as it has seven side doors for storage, side loading ramps, rear loading ramps and air suspension, although we will change the design of the rear doors.

“When we buy fleet its always new, with trailers we run them for five years and then do a refurbishment, so they run for a similar amount of time again. Our current trailer has been through two lifecycles.”

LOOKING AFTER

Apart from MoTs, vehicles are maintained inhouse from the preventative maintenance inspections (PMIs), to servicing and repairs, which are carried out by mechanic Colin Whyte. Richard explained that the company does a weekly service from Aberdeen to London and use a specific vehicle in a three-week rotation to spread out the mileage across the fleet.

“That vehicle leaves on Monday and will do various jobs on the way down to London. It is effectively a groupage service for household goods, fine art, and antiques on specialised vehicles. The vehicle will do any jobs that are required and then it’ll travel back up. We do that week in week out,” he said.

Mostly it’s an 18 tonner that does the trip but before the coronavirus lockdown started, the artic was used several times as the level of work had increased. “We cover the whole of the UK, although we have been busy in the Highlands, each week the entire fleet is doing more than 3,000 miles a week, which is high for removals.”

When the company celebrated 500 years in 1998, the fleet consisted of 50 lorries. While removals and storage were its mainstay, the society also ran a small but dedicated haulage fleet.

Growth was directly linked to the oil industry from the 1970s. Crude oil brought wealth and people, and The Shore Porters’ Society was instrumental in helping people move and relocate to Aberdeen.

“When I first joined, seven vehicles a week would leave Aberdeen, running a regular service to Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverness and London. We had all these weekly services in place, which grew the business to such a size,” he recalled.

At its peak, the annual price of Brent crude peaked in 2012 at $112 per barrel. By 2016, it had fallen to $44 per barrel, which led to mass redundancies with some 20,000 jobs lost between 2017 and 2018 alone, the equivalent to one in 10 people that lived in Aberdeen.

THE COMPETITION

As the oil industry shrunk, many companies disappeared while others downsized. “Had we not had that period of growth and success through the oil boom we could not have been able to pare back to where we are now. “Today’s fleet size has been around the same for the past five years and we don’t want to downsize anymore because we think we can grow back into the market,” he added.

“A lot of people came out of the oil industry and moved into cheap “man with a van” removals,” he explained. A Google search listed more than 60 removals “services” in the immediate Aberdeen area. Many are small operations with few overheads that are difficult to compete against.

“It’ll be interesting to see if government bring in an Operator’s License scheme for anything (just as a commercial vehicle) over 2.4 tonnes, which for us would be brilliant as it would level the playing field with the competition.

Total warehouse space at Aberdeen and Richmond upon Thames, Surrey is more than 275,000 sq ft. The Shore Porters’ Society acquired the London-based removals firm Rumsey and Son in 1992 and currently run two warehouses out of Richmond with a fleet of nine 7.5 to 18 tonne vehicles employing 19 people.

“In Aberdeen, the latest warehouse that we rebuilt is our Bannermill facility, which dates back to the horse and cart. The site previously held parking for most of our fleet along with yard storage and a three-floor granite-built warehouse.

“This was demolished, and the newly built warehouse was opened in 2013 that allows for palletised storage for all types of commodities, containerised storage for removal goods and increased yard storage outside due to an improved use of space on the site.”