Cambridgeshire Haulier reveals customers are starting to re-open

In a recent interview with motortransport.co.uk, Cambridgeshire haulier Welch’s Transport MD Jim Welch explained that although figures for April would be “a disaster” with them struggling at only 60-70% of normal volumes, some of their customers have begun to reopen their businesses (whilst adhering to social distancing rules) and are expecting the government to ease the current lockdown restrictions after the first May bank holiday.

He mentions that although this may be a bit premature, they’ve had to pull a few people back from furlough this week and have also re-taxed a few of their vehicles.

With Welch’s Transport being situated at the top of the M11 and A14 at Cambridge, they’re noticing a lot more vehicles flying around on their way towards the south coast ports or Felixstowe and Harwich.

With all of this in mind, it seems that pressure from the business community could end up forcing the government’s hand, with the country starting to unlock itself. Welch explains that a lot of the sectors made the lockdown decisions themselves, with the government lockdown following behind, so we may now see this working the other way around too, with sectors “voting with their feet” and the government then having to rubber stamp it.

Although their company has a wide portfolio of customers, Welch said its bias towards the badly hit construction sector meant that they’d had to furlough 30% of their workforce and 40% of their fleet was also parked up.

He goes on to explain that although they’ve stopped vehicles and saved on road tax and insurance, along with furloughing a load of staff, they’re effectively keeping the infrastructure going for 60-70% of the volume.

Like many businesses, they may be better off financially if they’d just closed everything down and furloughed all of the staff, reducing the overall costs compared to continuing to operate, but with contractual commitments to customers and networks, the idea of shutting down was never an option. So, with fixed costs that you can’t lose, rates and insurance on their depots, it just means they’ve got to take a massive hit financially.

Although the company has benefited from the government’s furlough scheme and from lower fuel costs, they will need to see what kind of economy we’re left with once we emerge from this before making decisions on redundancies – although there is no need to at the moment.

Like most of the haulage sector, Welch’s Transport have not utilised the government’s new loan schemes. A lot of people have reported that firstly, businesses who couldn’t borrow before probably still can’t borrow now and having these loans to pay back when the economy we return to is still unknown can’t be a commercially sensible thing to do.

You can read the full interview here.