The new transparent transport office management platform

An update from Phil Edwards, Managing Director

2010 was a big year for Speed. We had a transfer of ownership in March 2010 and started working with some large corporate clients. We recognised our unique position in the marketplace and quickly developed an in-house traffic routing platform to handle the routing of freight from our corporate clients. By July 2010 we had a new corporate image, a fresh new logo and a brand new website. In November 2010 we moved to our new larger premises where we now also offer storage and handle more freights daily than we ever have before.

For some time now I have worked on creating a base, a platform, the infrastructure into which we can expand and handle an increasing amount of freight daily. Now I feel the infrastructure is there. We have invested heavily into our new premises, undergone staff restructuring, employed new people, developed our existing staff members through training and we also regard ourselves highly for keeping our finger on the pulse of bleeding edge technology. You only have to look at the rest of I.T. in the freight industry, which is relatively antiquated, and our local competition, to see how they are not utilising modern technology. Our website is a prime example, but behind closed doors at our Welshpool office we are working on something even bigger.

We have noticed that due to the unique area in which we work, and our relationships with several corporate clients we need to maintain a high level of transparency in the data flowing between our systems and those of our customers. Current I.T. solutions in the freight industry do not address transparency in the way we would like, and they certainly aren’t able to operationally handle our unique set up. We have built several bespoke solutions in house that help the Speed management to monitor performance of deliveries, invoice clients and so on, but it’s time to build further on this. I want to incorporate one central platform, which enables us to tie in easily with our corporate clients, expand easily with any new corporate clients, effectively provide reporting information and provide an open platform on which we can build in the future.

This is where Transpire comes in. Development on this new platform has begun and Transpire will incorporate freight routing, management information and provide an interface through which our clients can communicate to access data. This is transparency at it’s best, and we want everyone to know just how seriously we take modern technology.

Transpire will make it easy for our in house development team to build extra features on rapidly. We aim to raise the bar of freight routing simplicity. All our corporate clients will have to do now is just send us an email of daily freight data and Transpire will intelligently handle the incoming freight data and route it accordingly.

If you haven’t been following the website for the past couple of months, or if you weren’t aware of our move, we have recently invested a substantial sum of money in the redevelopment of the former Floform building at Henfaes Lane, Welshpool.

This new building provides over 40,000 sq ft of indoor warehousing space which makes it ideal for our pallet operation and to cope with our recent expansion.

On Monday 8th November, one week behind schedule, we moved our pallet operation into our newly developed premises. We are keeping our old premises at Station Yard, Severn Road, Welshpool operational for another 2 weeks which is currently housing all our parcel based operations. We will soon be moving all of our freight operation to our new premises and closing down our previous premises.

Contact Information

If you are not already aware, here are the contact details for our two premises:

We have also invested heavily and made improvements to our I.T. infrastructure and email system, so while you should not experience any issues in contacting our staff via email, please do feel free to call us if you have any doubts.

We had originally envisaged a full move of the company to our newly built premises this weekend ready for opening Monday 1^st November, but due to circumstances outside of our control, we have had to delay this for a further week.

Therefore, we anticipate we will be experiencing severe communication issues regarding telephone communication only. Before our weekend migration of IT and telephones, we had moved our multi-line telephone system (on number 01938 558098) to our new premises. However as we had to cancel the move at the last minute, we now only have our backup single line telephone system in place at the old premises (on number 01938 556589).

We have set up diversions from our main number to our backup number, but due to the reduced amount of lines it is reasonable to expect congestion during peak periods of business.

We stress that our email and fax services are working and operational as usual so we request that in order to reduce congestion on our phone system, please could you use email or fax where possible. You can use the following email address: hello@speedwelshpool.com and we will deal with your enquiry immediately.

If your matter is of utmost urgency and you have been unable to contact us via 01938 556589, please resort in an emergency to contacting us via one of the following mobile telephone numbers: 07899 848 830 or 07817 281 685.

It is therefore with great pleasure that we announce that as of 1st November 2010 (TBC), we will be relocating premises to the former Floform Building, Henfaes Lane, Welshpool.

Recently we have had several write-ups and press releases/announcements in the Road Transport Magazine as well as local papers The Shropshire Star and The County Times.

The seven year lease to our new premises has been signed and finalised in the past few weeks and as we speak we are busy investing and working to transform the former Floform Building into our new freight hub of Mid-Wales. In total we are investing a staggering £40,000 on building work which includes an all new purpose built transport office built within the existing building as well as creation of a public reception for our customers.

Our new premises is of substantial size at over 30,000sq. ft. we are confident that it will accommodate the substantial extra volumes of freight we have been handling since April this year, as well as provide extra room for expansion and storage. We are looking to provide an excellent rate storage and pick and pack service shortly after we move so watch this space.

We have also recently agreed to begin work for another UK overnight pallet network – UPN (United Pallet Network).

Continue checking our website as we release more information on the development works at our new premises, including photos of the building work coming soon.

Palletways UK MD Craig Hibbert award the plaque to directors Phil Edwards & Nigel Jones

At a recent awards ceremony at Beaumont House Hotel in Windsor, Speed were awarded Palletways Platinum Partner status for a second year running.

The coveted Platinum Partner status is awarded to only a handful of Palletways depots, fourteen this year, down three on seventeen the previous year. In order to be awarded the highest award in the Palletways network, we had to demonstrate exemplary levels of delivery and collection service in KPIs and provision of service to both other Palletways members and our own customers.

This comes at the time when Palletways have recently launched their new marketing campaign which involved launching a giant hot air balloon dragon named Slick to reflect the seamless and professional Palletways service. The 61ft tall dragon with a glass bottomed ‘basket’ and a giant pallet on his back was launched from Warwick Castle earlier this month and will make appearances across the country.

Click to view a larger picture of this lorry

Last night we completed sign-writing of the first vehicle to proudly show our new, rebranded company image.

The 18 ton DAF LF lorry is now sporting the full rebranded Speed livery! We hope you will see it’s striking colours out and about Welshpool and Mid-Wales.

Picture will be following later today.

Due to company expansion, we have now implemented a new email addressing scheme which incorporates both the first and last names of the staff member you are writing to. For example, if previously you were communicating with Nick Eastbury via nick@speeddistribution.co.uk, his email address has now changed to nick.eastbury@speedwelshpool.com.

Please rest assured however that if you accidentally email an old address (to the speeddistribution.co.uk domain) by accident, your email will be forwarded over to the relevant person. This forwarding system will only be active for a few months however, so we kindly advise all customers to update their records and address books as appropriate.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Slick the dragon is launched from Warwick Castle

On 12th July 2010, Palletways embarked on their new marketing campaign by launching a giant hot air balloon dragon from Warwick Castle.

The 61ft tall balloon dragon named “Slick”, after the seamless and professional service Palletways provide to all customers, was developed by British balloon creator Lindstrand, who create balloons for such high profile clientele as Richard Branson.

Slick is the only balloon in the country that has a glass bottomed ‘basket’ and a giant pallet on his back. He has a wingspan of 14 metres, and a tail that is 44 metres long – longer than five double-decker buses parked end-to-end.

Slick forms part of the new Palletways UK ‘marketing vehicle’ and will be appearing at various events across the country over the next year.

For more information, please read the Palletways UK article here.