Hire purpose

Dawsongroup leads the way in trailer leasing, thanks in part to its exclusive deal with Lawrence David for its popular pillarless curtainsider. Steve Hobson found out more about what makes the partnership so strong

Contract hire and leasing giant Dawsongroup and trailer manufacturer Lawrence David (LD) have a long and close working relationship that includes 10 years of exclusivity on LD’s pillarless curtainsider.

MT caught up in March with Dawsongroup truck and trailer MD John Fletcher and LD commercial director Chris Curzon, who has just retired after 23 years with the Peterborough-based dry freight trailer builder and repairer, to talk about how they work together.

Dawsongroup’s trailer fleet stands at around 8,000, 60% of which are on long-term contracts with customers and the balance available for rent. The decision to buy exclusively LD dry freight trailers in 2013 coincided with a refocus on its trailer business.

“Trailers had largely been very much secondary until that point, but we made a decision to start promoting trailers as a central part of our overall offer,” says Fletcher.

“We were a heavily tractor-based business and no one looked at the trailer as the workhorses that they are. They were allowed to age and there wasn’t much focus on the design or the components that went into them.”

As a result, Dawsongroup’s trailer fleet had begun to show its age, with no definitive replacement cycle. Together with LD the firm came up with a plan to speed up the replacement of older trailers and renew a substantial part of its trailer fleet.

“Chris came up with a fleet cleanse programme involving substantial part-exchanges of our older trailers that we couldn’t remarket,” says Fletcher. “We have now got the trailer fleet to where we want it to be so we can rotate it every five years with a constant flow of really good spec trailers.

“In peak years we have bought over 1,000 units and the least we have done is 600 in a year. At any one time we have 200 to 300 trailers on order or in progress.”

Fleet of foot

Having this constant flow of trailers gives Dawsongroup the flexibility to either push them into the rental fleet or change the spec at short notice to meet the specific needs of a contract hire customer.

“The underpinnings of the trailer remain the same,” says Fletcher. “We wouldn’t change running gear or brakes but it might end up with a variation in height or the colour of the curtains.

“That means that any mobile engineer can go out anywhere in the UK and if he comes to a Dawsongroup trailer it will have the same underpinnings. If he needs a brake chamber or a slack adjuster, he’s got one.”

That standardisation also extends to the rest of the trailer components, greatly simplifying repair and maintenance.

“Dawsons’ engineering department along with LD were the first to introduce a Dawsons standard wiring diagram and a Dawsons standard braking system,” says Curzon. “Every one was done exactly the same way.”

While it might seem odd for an asset management business the size of Dawsongroup to have a single supplier for all its ambient trailers rather than playing the field, Fletcher says the arrangement delivers huge benefits.

“The deal of the day is OK,” he says. “But what we get over time is trust and there are things built into

➜ the trailer so we don’t need to reinvent the wheel every time. We spend a lot of a time working with LD on how we build more quality into the product and that is really important for us.

“If we can prevent a corner getting knocked off five years down the line we have saved an argument over a charge and mitigated a cost for our customer. It also enhances LD’s position in the used market and over the years that we have worked together that has always been at the forefront.”

Curzon, who worked at Dawsongroup “a few years” before joining LD, says that certainly over the last decade the rental firm has bought the highest spec equipment and this has helped it build relationships with suppliers and customers.

“Many of our component suppliers have introduced their new products through ourselves and Dawsongroup,” he says. “They were the first to go with TrCM+ [Haldex’s Safe Parking trailer rollaway prevention system] and were 18 months ahead of everyone else with LED lights. By having that constant influx of new equipment it has been easier to do that than with a stop-start situation we have seen with other companies.

“We have picked up significant business from people who have taken our trailers on rent from Dawsons. About half of the 50 biggest operators in the Motor Transport Top 100 are companies we started supplying new equipment to after Dawsons supplied them with a LD trailer.

“Twenty years ago LD was doing fewer than 1,000 trailers a year, with a reputation for dealing with small- to medium-sized hauliers. The biggest single order LD had ever taken before 2003 was for 80 trailers.

“Once we started dealing with Dawsons it gave us the opportunity to go after a bigger market and deliver the 100 or 200 unit orders.”

Boxing clever

Dawsongroup also worked closely with LD to improve the design of the humble box van to make it stronger and more resistant to damage.

“We reduced interior damage to just about nothing almost overnight,” says Curzon.

“If you look at the market today, almost all the