Euro-Tran

Triangle Survey Puts APC Ahead for Customer Service

admin — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 06:12:21 +0000

Delivered right on the night

The influential Triangle UK Domestic B2B Parcels Distribution Survey – described as “the industry standard benchmarking survey for the express industry” – rates APC Overnight as consistently top of most of the customer-orientated categories. The Survey, published in May 2010, collates the experiences of 450 customers with a combined annual spend of £23 million, and ranks 12 major overnight delivery companies on a wide range of aspects of service. APC came out top for customer service, quality of transport service, provision of information, and price, as well as in many of the subcategories. We are also very gratified to have the highest “loyalty index” with 80% of respondents saying they would recommend us, as well as top marks for collecting and delivering on time. However, we need to continue to earn these ratings – especially as 34% of respondents expect to see no increase – or even a decrease – in parcel expenditure over the next 12 months. Clearly the APC ‘Brand’ has a long way to go to reach exposure levels enjoyed by the global players, indeed will doubtless never reach these levels. These surveys however do re-iterate that regardless of the image presented, and the revenue spent on the brand -CUSTOMERS STILL PLACE SERVICE AS OF PARAMOUNT IMPORTANCE.

APC Overnight experiences continued growth.

admin — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 05:53:40 +0000

APC Overnight is expanding with significant increases in warehousing and operational facilities focused on the Midlands and Southern Counties of England. The UK’s largest next day parcel network reports that several members have strengthened their operations and services because of increasing business.

APC EDS Couriers in Cannock is now occupying a new site five times the size of its previous depot and warehouse. Andy Evans, EDS Courier MD expects this upward trend to continue and says: “As we come out of recession, more businesses are sending more parcels at the same time as holding less stock themselves – and of course they still require reliable delivery to their customers the next day.”

APC Acclaim Parcel Express is servicing Portsmouth from a new local depot, adding to its existing businesses in Southampton and the Isle of Wight. The expansion was partly prompted by rising demand for stock control and distribution services, in which the company has significant expertise – especially with imports from the Far East.

APC Streetwise moved its Warwick operation to a new 10,000 sq ft site with a half acre loading bay, to accommodate expanding demand including daily fresh food deliveries to household name restaurateurs such as Heston Blumenthal and Raymond Blanc. The company also has facilities in Croydon, Leatherhead and New Malden, and Martin Russell, MD, says: “Overnight delivery is definitely where the growth is.”

APC Scarlet Couriers has added a new 20,000 sq ft depot to its chain of facilities serving the Thames Valley and Chilterns. The Wycombe depot allows it to consolidate warehousing and distribution under one roof, and connects with existing locations as Martin Cavendish, Operations Director, explains: “Our Wycombe depot joins up our existing customer zones to provide APC services all the way from west of Reading via Slough and Uxbridge through to London’s Shepherds Bush.”

Other depots that have moved to new bigger sites include APC Roadlink, Bournemouth, APC TWC Parcel Collection Services in Shrewsbury and APC Eezehaul in Crawley.

Maintaining Industry leading service levels clearly brings its rewards, Whatever the economic Climate.

Competition Winner.

admin — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 14:28:35 +0000

A winner has been drawn for our competition to win a Garmin Satellite Navigation kit.
Carol Ambler from the Despatch Department at Delivernet on the Snaygill Industrial Estate in Skipton being the lucky entrant, Carol was presented with the device by our Ron Roberts.

A new competition will now commence and we have decided to offer a Wii game console and sports package, Good Luck with that and thanks again to Carol for showing interest
in our competition

The Global Parcel Industry –

admin — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 14:09:15 +0000

A TRULY GLOBAL INDUSTRY The numbers are mind boggling, In addition to the major ‘global’ carriers a multitude of other networks move millions of packages each day. A huge level of resource is required to do this, state of the art technology, and seamless logistics. World leading brands exist within this industry – UPS – FEDEX – DHL – TNT…..all household names. As a small local company and networking within the APC group Euro-Tran Despatch is up against such powerhouses of the industry. All is not well within our industry, The constant endeavour of the globals to achieve ‘market share’ has led to major consolodation within the industry, and some excellent brands have, as such disappeared, swallowed up, in some cases by lesser companies. City Link are ‘reportedly’ just emerging from difficult times some time after their takeover of Target Express. Experiencing massive losses, and shedding enormous resource and staff along the way. DHL having pulled out of the US Overnight parcels market, Then go on to ‘allegedly’ pay HDN in excess of £200m to take its UK overnight business off its hands, This in order to enable DHL to ‘focus’ on its core international and priority business. Clearly all is not well.
Uk Mail, formally Business Post, now see’s postal mail accounting for some 45% of its business, Meanwhile Royal Mail, as a result of the opening up of the under £1 shipment (For so long a monopoly of the Royal Mail)and after repeated strikes over the Crozier cutbacks is a fraction of its former self.

What does the future hold for the Industry ? One thing is for sure, Consolidation will continue and fewer carriers will result in less choice. While all this goes on, our small depot in Skipton continues to ship on behalf of over 300 locally based businesses. We endeavour where possible to do so with an honesty, and a sense of humour not necessarily available with the big players. When you handle thousands of parcels a day, sometimes it goes wrong, nobodys perfect, But we believe when it does go wrong we are as pro-active as any carrier to make it right. But service levels remain second to none. Even in these difficult economic times our client base continues to grow and few clients are ‘Lost’ to the global players.

This is achieved through damned hard work, and over a hundred and twenty (The largest network in the Uk) APC depots assist us in our endeavours. We must however develop what we offer to our clients. With the advent of Online Booking, Pod retrieval, and the excellent service levels on offer we do find that we have less and less interaction with our clients. The traditional banter between our staff and clients enabled us to judge what we do right, and when we get it wrong so its important we maintain these lines of communication. A dynamic user friendly website is crucial to maintaning this , so please any feedback you have on the service we offer, or don’t, as the case may be is crucial. Let us have it. Also, If you have any news stories we can add to our Blog send them to me.? Do you have staff doing something exceptional ? Have you won an order from an unusual source – or vital to retaining /growing your workforce locally? Global the industry may be – LOCAL is our interest.

E-mail me personally with any ideas or subjects you would like to see on our blog – photos included. I cannot promise to post everything but will try to accomodate them where possible. I will look to add links to websites you may find interesting, informative or just plain funny.

Thanks for your time..

Dave Howson
MD Euro-Tran Despatch
dave@euro-tran.co.uk

We Need Competition Entrants –

admin — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 14:57:24 +0000

Trouble uploading PODs !

We need some entrants for our free to enter Sat Nav competiton on the Euro-Tran Homepage… Come on guys its FREE to
enter, and this time the number of entrants has been poor… We had a great response to the Acer notebook competition but it would appear nobody wants a sat nav…! err WHY?

Come on enter – (The answer is GPO)

Would a Local Delivery Service benefit you?

admin — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 12:10:10 +0000

We are currently looking into introducing a local service aimed at providing a cost
effective, overnight service throughout the West/North Yorkshire areas. Perhaps
even including South Yorkshire. Would such a service benefit you ?

We would have a target of £3 up to 20 kilos, and look to provide the service over
the BD,LS,HX,HD,WF,HG,and possibly the YO/S postal codes. Such a service would
be more cost effective than using your own delivery vehicle. The service would of
course work within the current online booking procedures, and be trackable, POD’s
online, etc.

If you have any views on such a service, or can provide any feedback on other
services you feel we should offer, please let us know.

Dave Howson
Euro-Tran Despatch
dave@euro-tran.co.uk

ACER Notebook competition winner.

admin — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 13:19:06 +0000

Our Acer Notebook Competition has now been drawn. There were as expected few entries with the correct answers. Almost without exception entrants believed TNT and DHL were British. There are in fact only a few British owned carriers left.

APC Overnight are of course British. UK mail (Formerly Business Post Group), Nightfreight, Tuffnells, The Royal Mail/Parcelforce, XDP, and to a lesser degree the Home Delivery Co, and Hermes, who are really developments of the Catalogue delivery people.

We had four entrants who got it right, The winning entrant was drawn out by Colette in our depot .

Andrew Barnes who is employed by the Teacherboards company on Skiptons Airedale Business Park, Was the lucky winner and Andrew will hopefully receive his notebook before the christmas break.

A new competition will be launched in the new year.

Meantime thank you for entering, May I take this opportunity to wish you all a very Happy Christmas and
a Prosperous new Year.

David Howson and all at the Euro-Tran Team in Skipton.

www.onstop.co.uk

admin — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 16:45:58 +0000

Good Credit Control is at the heart of every succesful business. Many business’s fail, not due to the product, not through lack of flair, the ingenuity or the efforts of their Directors – THEY SIMPLY RUN OUT OF MONEY.

Onstop's Jeremy Unwin with Glen Bullivant and Euro-Tran's David Howson

With this in mind, and fully aware of the average debtor day experience of the transport industry , Euro-Tran have taken the Onstop Procedure on board. “Having an excellent relationship with almost all of our customers is fine” explains Helen Thornborrow, Accounts manager at the company, “Its still a bit of a cat and mouse game though when it comes to collecting the money in, and in the present economic environment things look set to get worse” She say’s.

Onstop has been developed to handle data sharing in a very sensitive manner, Creating responsible online credit communities. “We value our relationship with the customers, The two partners of Euro-Tran have built the business up over twenty years on a very personal basis, and are always available to clients”Helen tells us,”With this approach we retain business far better than the larger Parcel Carriers, I have been here for eleven years, Many customers dealt with Euro-Tran even before I arrived, but the business still relies on cash, Without it I am out of a job” Helen says. “Onstop is a simple web based procedure that suits some scenarios, Its cost effective and takes a good deal of pressure off my position” she concludes.

Glen Bullivant FICM.(Pictured above) A Vice President of the Institute of Credit Management and the author of some excellent publications on the management of credit describes the onstop procedure as ‘part of todays credit control arsenal’

For more information -
The Onstop Procedure

CURRENT FUEL SURCHARGES.

admin — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 14:51:44 +0000

**** The Current Fuel Charges In Place are ****

Uk freight (Euro-Tran/APC) 4.5%
International (Standard UPS) 3.50% (Dec 7th to Jan 6th)
(Express UPS) 13.50% (Dec 7th to Jan 6th)

December – AGAIN – Christmas 2009 is upon us.

admin — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 01:00:52 +0000

Christmas is upon us.

Its that time of year again, We have already had a number of enquiries as to our Christmas Operations
Its now December so the schedule is listed below.

Wednesday 23/12/2009 Normal Operations – Night Trunk Operational.
Thursday 24/12/2009 Depot open until 2pm – ( We will only guarantee to attempt AM manifested consignments today, Many destinations will be unattended after lunchtime.)
Friday 25/12 Through to Monday 28/12 Depot Closed.
Tuesday 29/12/2009 Normal Service resumes at 8.00 am
Wednesday 30/12/2009 Normal Service
Thursday 31/12/2009 Depot open until 2pm. ( We will only guarantee to attempt AM manifested consignments today )
Friday 1/1 – Saturday 2/1 – Sunday 3/1 – Depot Closed.
Monday 04/01/2010 – Normal Service is Resumed at 7am.

Latest collection times will be as follows.
Bradford 16:00 hrs – Shipley 16:15 hrs – Keighley 16:30 hrs – Skipton 17:00hrs – Drop into Depot 17:00hrs