The combination of Hayton Coulthard Transport, ARR Craib and Pollock makes for one of Scotland’s biggest fleets. All three are part of the Gregory Group, and in an exclusive interview for Transport News, Duncan Coulthard, Murray Kelman and Scott Pollock extenuate the positives of working together to Kevin Swallow. Images by Steve McCann.
(ORINGALLY PUBLISHED IN JUNE 2022)
Often, when a business is taken over by a bigger firm, the name is lost to history. Not so for ARR Craib and Pollock. Since being bought by Gregory Distribution, these longstanding family-run hauliers have retained their identity, their look and operation. Today they work alongside Hayton Coulthard, who entered a joint venture with Gregory Distribution in 2009.
Behind the decision to retain the ARR Craib Transport and Pollock names is because the chief executive of Gregory Distribution John Gregory recognised both hauliers are very strong brands and have close ties with their respective customers.
Image by Steve McCann.
They also complement the Hayton Coulthard name operating out of Scotland and its long association with Gregory Distribution.
By any stretch of the imagination the combination of Hayton Coulthard, ARR Craib and Pollock would make for a competitive logistics group in their own right.
They operate from seven sites across Scotland; Hayton Coulthard’s main depots are at Twynholm, Ecclefechan and Cumbernauld; ARR Craib from Dyce (Aberdeen), Queenslie (Glasgow) and Inverness; and Pollock from Bathgate. South of the border, Pollock also have a site at Birtley in Tyne and Wear.
Between the three hauliers there are more than 400 trucks and 750 employees, and which combined boasts a £96m annual turnover in the last financial year.
THE GROUP
Yet that is half the number of vehicles running across the Gregory Distribution fleet. From its headquarters in North Tawton, Devon, Gregory operates 927 trucks and 1,439 trailers and employs more than 2,500 people and run out of 26 sites across England and Wales.
In total, Gregory Distribution and the three Scottish hauliers have a fleet of 1,348 trucks, 2,174 trailers and more than 3,200 employees.
Each operator has retained their truck’s original livery but are united by two medal-like roundels. One is on the truck’s cab with the company name, the other has the ‘Delivering Winners’ strapline on the trailer that Gregory Distribution adopted when supporting five UK athletes at the London Olympics in 2012.
The most recent acquisition by Gregory Distribution (Holdings) Ltd was Pollock (Holding) Ltd and its subsidiaries Pollock (Scotrans) and Pollock Express. The Bathgate-based family-owned business dates back to 1935, and Scott Pollock represents the ‘third generation’ to run the business.
Left to right; Duncan Coulthard, Murray Kelman and Scott Pollock.
It joined ARR Craib Transport, which Gregory Distribution (Holdings) acquired in 2018. The haulage business was formed in 1983 when local haulier George Craib merged with Aberdeen Road Runners (ARR), which specialised in deliveries for the energy industry throughout Europe.
Subsequently the business expanded to include pallet services through the Palletline network (including running the Scottish regional hub for Palletline) and contracts with some of Scotland’s most famous brands.
Murray Kelman is the ARR Craib group operations director. He joined Aberdeen Road Runners (ARR) exactly 40 years ago, six months before the merger.
Duncan Coulthard is the managing director of Hayton Coulthard Transport, which has had a close working relationship with Gregory Distribution dating back to the 1980s. “We would backload each other’s trucks,” he recalled, which allowed both fleets to operate more viably further afield from their respective base of operations at either end of the UK.
He continued: “With ARR Craib in Aberdeen and Gregory based in Devon, the north of Scotland and southwest of England are the most awkward parts of the UK to service. Most hauliers don’t want to go to these places because it’s tremendously difficult to get return loads to make it work.”
Before 2018, ARR Craib’s work also included a long-distance fleet with bulkers and flats. Murray explained: “The work was more ad hoc, and you’d be on the phone to 10 or 12 customers you’d dealt with before to secure work.”
As an independent haulier moving freight into and out of the Highlands, it often meant cooperation and working relationships with ‘competitors’ to reduce empty running.
“Most of Scotland’s population is in the central belt. That will always dictate that trying to get the service to Aberdeen and Inverness will be challenging, and that was one of the hardest parts for us, trying to bridge that gap,” said Murray.
“But being part of the Gregory group, it is more organised and there is more consistency in the business you get involved with.”
HELPING HAND
What the three have in common, Duncan said, ‘is that we are all long-distance hauliers who help each other through the peaks and troughs’. He added: “There is now hardly any area in the UK we don’t have a customer of the group.”
Image by Steve McCann.
Since the joint venture Hayton Coulthard Transport working with the much larger Gregory Distribution fleet has enjoyed a much bigger scale of economy and efficiencies, which ‘allows us to bid for bigger contracts’ the Twynholm-based company couldn’t access if the firm had remained on its own, he explained.
Scott agreed and said the size of the group in Scotland alone now makes it more competitive when tendering for contracts, which goes through the Gregory contract tendering team. “There aren’t too many jobs we couldn’t handle,” explained Scott.
Through its first year as part of the group Pollock has also seen a reduction in dead mileage, better vehicle utilisation, and quick access to ‘alternative’ loads within the group in a timely fashion.
“One of our customers who provides 20 loads a day had a breakdown, so we picked up the phone and got work from Hayton Coulthard, which would have been sub-contracted, so there is work there if you need it within the group,” Scott explained.
The transport team at Bathgate also continually discover small efficiencies where Pollock can benefit the group. “We have a depot at Birtley, Tyne and Wear. Gregory runs a contract out of Leicester and run three loads a day up to the northeast.
“We are desperate to get loads back to Birtley, so we are now doing the reloads from Leicester.
“Previously, we would have not gone for a contract like that on our own because we’d have had to do the whole job and that would have included routes to parts of the UK, we wouldn’t have been interested in.”
SUPPORT NETWORK
Scott revealed that prior to the deal with Gregory his firm was on the cusp of being ‘too big’ for its current back-office infrastructure, which would have required recruitment for people in human resources and health and safety. What’s more, the day-to-day running of the business left too little time to concentrate on the actual transport.
Now, like both ARR Craib and Hayton Coulthard Transport, he can utilise Gregory’s administration and back-office support teams, which means ‘you can get on and run the transport bit knowing there’s folk in the background that you can rely on’, he said.
And there is also the collective buying power for new assets that larger fleets enjoy. Gregory Group’s fleet replacement strategy is based on total cost of ownership, which is driven primarily by vehicle and trailer age, mileage, and maintenance costs.
This works across the entire business, although recent events and factory closures have played havoc with ordering new trucks and trailers as well as lead times.
Notwithstanding the current climate, Murray explained how being part of a larger group changed vehicle replacement for ARR Craib since 2018: “The money you need to invest is colossal, and before it was becoming increasingly more difficult to do. Buying as part of the group makes it more affordable.”
Scott agreed, and said he has 30 new trucks due as part of a post-Covid catch up replacement programme that had Pollock been on its own, would have taken much longer to achieve.
REGULAR CONTACT
Each Thursday the bosses have a Teams meeting with senior management at Gregory Distribution to run through KPIs and numbers and have the chance to air operational issues to see if the wider group can provide a solution.
“Every morning there’s a nationwide Teams call between all the transport managers from all the depots,” Duncan explained.
“It throws up any dead legs or areas that need resource, assess the traffic volumes in each area and see who needs support. It’s excellent, if you have a problem there might be someone who can help.”
Being accountable for their own respective businesses means the inclination to take the odd ‘gamble’ to stitch together jobs has diminished, because if it goes wrong there is scrutiny from above rather than it simply being a lesson learned.
Murray concluded: “We work well together because we are like-minded people who enjoy a similar, high quality customer profile.”
