Last year was a landmark one for Cranleigh Freight Services. Thanks to a rapidly expanding home delivery business, a need to hone its competitive edge in Europe and accommodate growth within its supply chain business, the Surrey-based logistics company moved home, introduced new IT systems and upgraded its fleet with double-decked semi-trailers and road-trains.

Founded in 1977 by Colin and Pauline Young, Cranleigh Freight Services (CFS) started life delivering general freight into Europe. From a single office in the leafy commuter village of Cranleigh, the business quickly built a sound reputation for professionalism and reliability, winning a major contract for Martinair Cargo, a continuing business partner to this day.

Today CFS operates from three main depots: Dunsfold Park near Guildford, Aldershot and Hemel Hempstead, and has an annual turnover of £16 million. Its growth is well documented, the company having secured further high profile contracts with Martinair Holland, MFI, GM Daewoo and Ricoh.

We asked CFS group sales and marketing manager Becky Young – wife of CFS joint managing director Graham Young – what the secret was behind the company’s success. ‘We have forged our business into a multi-faceted total logistics solutions provider that has the ability to deliver on time, every time,’ she replies. ‘Failure is not an option and the whole operation is based on good planning, communication across all levels of the company and teamwork.’
The CFS Group is split into four main businesses. CFS European is the foundation business and 75% of its work is time definite deliveries; half of which is airfreight. Young explains: ‘Many international cargo airlines use the European airports as central hubs for their operations. The landing fees at Heathrow are colossal, as is the ground time cost. European airports are geared up for large amounts of freight-only traffic and can take aircraft such as the Antanovs. This is why a large amount of airfreight is trunked by road across the Channel.

'Each truck is treated as a flight, with timed departure and arrival times and its own unique flight number. Reliability is everything because our “flights” have to meet real flights at the European airfreight hubs,’ she says.

But despite its reputation, blue-chip clients and efficiency CFS European has felt the effects of competition from Eastern European operators both here and on the Continent.

‘Their domestic rules ignore EU law on working time regulations; they run the gauntlet of driver’s hours rules, buy cheap 10-year-old equipment and pay their drivers less than £100 a week’, Young says. ‘It means they are continually trying to get in and undercut. Our policy is to run a wide variety of the best most up to date equipment.

'Several of our trailers have roller beds and are capable of handling four Q7 747 pallets. It gives us, and our customer’s, flexibility. It also puts us in a position with the air freight business that the Eastern European operators find hard to compete with,’ Young adds.

The remainder of CFS European’s business is high-tech high-value goods and groupage. The European fleet runs low-ride curtainsided, dry box and fridge trailers. In February last year CFS introduced mega double-decked road-train combinations and double-decked semi-trailers to its fleet.

Bodied by Hertoghs and Eck, the vehicles are fully configured for European operation on low ride chassis and enable an internal load height of 3m. Additional features on the road-train vehicles include folding internal doors with a hydraulic connecting ramp, enabling drive-through loading.

Built by Pacton on a Mercedes chassis, Young says the new wagon and drags almost double the volume it carried on its old single-deck semi-trailers. ‘We can offer double capacity to our clients, but at a price closer to that charged for an artic load. In Europe we have to do everything we can to keep our competitive edge,’ she explains.

In view of CFS’s use of max volume vehicles, we asked Becky Young if the 25.25m EMS concept might benefit CFS’s operation. ‘If it was something we could use both here and abroad, the idea of moving up to 80 pallets per journey on double-decked vehicles would be appealing. But I wonder how long it would take to recover the considerable capital outlay.

‘From our experience with the road-trains, our costs go up while the rates that clients are prepared to pay go down. You do not get double the money for twice the load. I wonder how cost effective they would be on a four-year replacement basis,’ she replies.

CFS’s UK operation mainly revolves around the Pall-Ex network, but it also moves part and full loads and works closely with CFS European’s groupage operation. CFS is the fifth member of the network and it moves around 650 pallets a week for clients and delivers around 550 a week on behalf of other Pall-Ex network members.

To continue working within Pall-Ex, CFS UK has had to invest a five figure sum in new, Pall-Ex supplied, handheld point of delivery equipment (PDAs) so it can conform fully with Pall-Ex’s ‘Pall-IT’ goods tracking.
Young says that the new technology – which among other things records deliveries to postcodes with a digital signature – has improved this part of CFS UK’s operation although initially the drivers were wary.

Young says: ‘It caught one or two out and they became very sceptical, the “big brother”, thing I suppose. Now they are fine with it and we are happy because it has cut out some of the unscheduled stops! Pall-Ex aside, as far as IT is concerned we have invested heavily throughout the rest of the business. We have fitted new Astrata GPS tracking equipment to all our box and double-deck vehicles, which is accurate to 2m, and we have also launched our own in-house developed track and trace system, Captain.

'This has been enhanced into a complete logistics management system. It will use PDAs and allows full visibility of customers goods via the internet,’ she adds.

The third division of CFS is CFS Supply Chain. This arm of the company runs several of the support operations that form part of CFS’s total logistics solution. CFS’s move to its new headquarters on Dunsfold Park has meant that it can now offer warehouse space totalling over 180,000sq-ft across three sites. Young says: ‘We run warehousing, inventory management, act as air and sea freight agents and we operate a contract hire service.

'Clients benefit from running their own vehicles, while contracting out the difficulties associated with operating licences. CFS Supply Chain can offer the complete solution. We can manage the purchase order side of things anywhere in the world, ship the goods, store them, pick them and can deliver individual retail orders into a customer’s home.’

But the jewel in CFS’s growth crown is its home delivery service, CFS Direct Home Delivery (DHD). DHD was born six years ago as a result of working with MFI delivering the retailer’s goods. Since then DHD has grown beyond CFS’s most optimistic predictions and today counts Alders, BHS, Laura Ashley and Furniture Village among its clients. This rapid growth has resulted in several service level partnerships covering the UK and Ireland based at 13 depots, ranging from Exeter to Inverness.

Becky Young says: ‘This is the age of internet driven sales and both manufacturers and retailers are looking for that competitive edge, in many cases streamlining their logistics chain and offering an added value service, such as home delivery, to the customer. The goods we handle for our clients come straight from source into our warehouses, are picked and delivered to the client’s customer’s home,’ she explains.

‘Our new Captain integrated IT handles all the order processing and routeing and also allows full visibility of customer’s orders via the internet so they can see how orders are progressing.’

The secret to DHD’s success is service. The vast majority of goods delivered by DHD are beds and furniture. All DHD’s vehicles are double-manned and customers are kept informed of impending deliveries via DHD’s call centre. On arrival at the delivery address, DHD’s staff will check the route into the customer’s house for obstructions, deliver into the room, unpack the goods and undertake basic assembly.

Young says: ‘DHD is delivering into almost 1000 homes every week and we are receiving enquiries from potential clients all the time.’

CFS has nearly 140 vehicles ranging from artics to drawbars and 3.5-tonne vans. Its fleet is split primarily between Daf and Mercedes-Benz and is managed by transport manager Nick Brackpool. Before leaving the village of Cranleigh in the second half of last year, the Surrey-based company had done all its own maintenance in-house – and provided a workshop service for external clients – but now it is based on Dusfold Park it relies on contract maintenance for all major work. A fleet engineer has been retained to look after routine servicing and inspection as well as a mobile workshop vehicle, which responds to emergencies.

CFS has a policy of running the most up to date vehicles and so we asked joint managing director, Graham Young about his thoughts on Euro 4 and digital tachographs. ‘An up to date fleet ensures reliability and helps us to retain drivers. Thankfully we have a very low turnover,’ he says. ‘As far as Euro 4 is concerned we are not looking too far forward. As there is no incentive from government to help offset the extra £5000 we will have to pay for these trucks so we are in no rush to buy them.

‘We will continue to look at the various options in preparation for when we have no choice on new vehicles. In answer to your question about digital tachographs, we embrace their introduction because drivers have too much paperwork to deal with at present. Tacho cards, working time sheets and all the rest of the documentation they have to deal with just gets in the way. We won’t retrofit, but we keep the fleet as up to date as possible and I look forward to the day when it is fully equipped with digital tachographs’, he says.

We ask Graham Young whether he takes much advantage of his RHA membership. ‘We are also members of the FTA and my partner David Wells has been quite active in the past, attending local FTA meetings,’ Young says. ‘To be honest with you the FTA fits with our freight forwarding and supply chain operations.

‘A few years ago we used the RHA’s international services a lot, but now we get all the updates we need on national holidays and driving bans from our local agents on the ground in Europe. We run several relatively niche operations and there’s always the help with hazardous cargo regulations, but we look for bespoke products and tend not to use the trade association’s business services.’

So what else does the future hold for Cranleigh? Becky Young says: ‘As far as Europe is concerned fierce competition from the Eastern Europeans has meant growth in some areas of this business has been stifled.

The only area we feel we have the power to expand into is the airfreight business. We are tendering for two additional contracts with carriers. We have the right equipment, credentials and have not let any of our existing clients down in the 27 years we have been involved in the business.

‘DHD is our biggest growth sector and where we see the greatest opportunity for further expansion. For example there is a massive level of returns, which the retailers do not want back. We are looking into setting up an eshop to resell these goods.

‘Although DHD has no plans to move into procurement we can enhance the service by reducing further the amount goods are handled; a full logistics solution for our clients which ties in with plans for our supply chain business,’ she explains.

‘Finally we are looking into a full service, plus install, white goods operation for DHD, but that this will require a mass-market approach and dedicated vehicles to make such an operation viable’, she adds.
Homes are becoming the heart of CFS’s business, but this does not come as a complete surprise. The business was started by a husband and wife team and now their son is a joint managing director.

Continuing the family theme, Graham Young’s fellow MD, David Wells, speaks to his wife, Joanna, on a daily basis about the company’s credit control and Ben Cox, who manages European operations, works alongside his wife, Lisa, who manages UK Services.

There is no doubt that CFS owes much of its success to its close knit family of employees, its focus and overwhelming will to get it right first time every time.