For South West Business Insider’s Business Leader of the Month series, Chris Ward met with Angela Butler, managing director of 100 year-old Devon-based haulage firm Gregory Group to discuss the ongoing challenges of meeting demand in the logistics and distribution sector, how the company has combated the post-Covid driver shortage and the technologies it is investing in for the future.
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00:00Although we're a big organisation now, we'll be about 390 million turnover in next year's
00:15budget, we still have a family feel to us. So we have become more corporate over time.
00:21We've needed to, because you need to have all the right controls in place when you're
00:23that size. But we do still have this family feel to us, which makes us more agile than
00:29maybe some of our competitors, makes us able to be flexible with customer requirements.
00:34So we'll look at the solution that the customer wants and we'll redesign that to their advantage.
00:42That's the kind of thing we call continuous improvement. So our CI ethos is quite unique
00:47to us, I would say. We're also leveraging our technology now. So we're developing a
00:53lot more customer facing technology, which is quite bespoke to individual customers.
00:58So there'll be a sort of common platform, but then we can bespoke what the customer
01:03sees and we're rolling that out to our customers now. So that makes us quite unique. And we're
01:09also, I guess our people is the other thing. Our people are very important to us. They
01:15are the kind of bedrock of the business, if you like. They are our face to the customer.
01:20And so it's having that unique culture and people who are proud to work here. I would
01:25say that differentiates us quite a lot from our competitors. When we went into COVID,
01:31the business was affected significantly like everyone else. We had three strands of the
01:35business, one which stopped dead in its tracks, one which went absolutely mad in terms of
01:42volume. So everyone was changing their habits, eating habits, whatever. So we're really busy.
01:46And then there was another sort of third of the business in the middle that the volumes
01:50dropped right off, but we were still servicing them. So that gave us our own challenges during
01:54COVID. As we came out of COVID, the demand just grew significantly. So everyone, there
02:00was all this sort of pent up demand. People had either been furloughed and saved money
02:04and therefore were spending it or people were staycationing. And with our base in the Southwest,
02:09there are a lot of holidaymakers coming into the Southwest. So the demand was outstripping
02:13the supply of vehicles. The driver crisis then loomed its head. I mean, well-documented
02:19that there's a shortage of drivers in this country. So that reared its head and we ended
02:23up really challenged to keep up with the demand, but we prided ourselves on our service.
02:29So we made adjustments to wages. We bought as many trucks as we could, whereas we would
02:33previously relied on subcontractors. You couldn't at the time. So we bought a lot of our own
02:38vehicles. What then happened was all the supply chain issues, which meant those vehicles didn't
02:42come in as quickly as we would like. Normally there'd be a lead time of three months, maybe
02:45six months for something specialist. Those lead times moved out to two years. Again,
02:49it was quite well-documented, but we found that because of that, we were buying vehicles
02:54that we maybe wouldn't have bought and our fleet was getting older. And so the legacy
02:58of that is now we're seeing high maintenance costs. We've got an older fleet than we would
03:02have liked. And we're now in the stages of investing. We've got a significant investment
03:07going on this year and next to get our fleet back up to date, take away some of those issues
03:11we've seen, hopefully create a bit more stability there. I say that's one of our biggest challenges.
03:17The other one I think is around our growth. We continue to grow. And I would say we've
03:22constantly got growing pains because we're needing to adapt as we grow. We either need
03:26to put in a new system or change our processes or bring in new kit. And so that affects us
03:32and we're just constantly having to reinvent our solutions. And that's, it's one of the
03:37challenges, but it's also what keeps it really interesting and really exciting is, you know,
03:40makes it a dynamic business, I think. So I think the sustainability agenda is really
03:45massive for us. I think, as I said, I probably should have mentioned it earlier when we talked
03:49about what differentiates us, but we're ahead of our field in that sustainability offering.
03:55We're proactive about partnering with all our customers to understand where could we
03:59switch to an alternative fuel for them. So we have a number of vehicles that are electric
04:03coming into the fleet now, but we have some already we're adding to those. We have gas
04:07vehicles and we're running a number of vehicles on HVO to support our customers' sustainability
04:12requirements. So that journey is only going to increase and we have our own sustainability
04:16director who helps to us to shape our thinking and make sure we're supporting what our customers
04:21need really going forward. So that's going to be massive. I think in particular, hydrogen
04:27fuel vehicles are going to come along now. The electric vehicles are starting to filter
04:31into the market. Hydrogen is going to be the next thing. My view on it is that will be
04:35where you can't get the payload on the other vehicles, on the other electric or gas type
04:41vehicles or where you can't get the range on them because it's going to be more expensive.
04:45Now presumably the price will come down over time as it will with some of the electric
04:49vehicles, but it is one of those things that we're definitely going to need it. I think
04:54that is where the market's going, but it comes at a cost and therefore I think it will fill
04:59the gap that the other vehicles can't. So we link in with all the providers, so all
05:04the OEMs, the equipment manufacturers, we link in with them and we're always partnering
05:09with them to understand what technology they're bringing out, what the new vehicles they're
05:12bringing to the fore and partnering with our customers to see what best suits them and
05:18their sustainability agendas.