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Take Me Group adds 500-car Northants’ United Travel Group Mark Bursa Ambitious taxi operator Take Me has added another major company to its growing portfolio, with the addition of Northamptonshire-based United Travel Group. The £5.2 million deal is one of the biggest yet as Take Me Group seeks to build a national portfolio of taxi and private hire operations. United Travel Group runs a combined fleet of 500 cars under a number of brands, including Bounds Taxis, Raffles, Lee Cabs, Echo Cars and Alco Taxis. The group was founded 65 years ago by Harry Bound, and it operates in Milton Keynes, Northampton, Kettering, Rushden and Newport Pagnell. Bounds group made a profit of £1.4 million in the past 12 months, despite the pressures of the Covid-19 pandemic. Take Me Group chief executive David Hunter said: “This further expands our operations in the Midlands and A14/M1 corridors. United Travel Group is a well-run group of companies and one of
[from left] Stuart Russell and David Wright of Bounds Group
the best in the centre of the UK. This will allow us to cover areas from as far east as Cambridge, right over to Milton Keynes and Northampton. It will join up with our existing companies in Leicestershire.” Hunter said a total of six more companies would be joining the group before the end of the summer. Take Me will start to
rebrand its companies later this year, as it becomes a mobility as a service provider, which manages its own fleets. Bounds has a trading history of more than 60 years of and is a well established part of United Travel Group. David Wright, the former owner and shareholder, will be retiring to concentrate on his music and
property empire, while Stuart Russell will be retained as Chief operating officer. “I have really enjoyed developing the technology to power our taxi fleets,” said Wright. “Although the pandemic was tough on us all, it has been a challenge that I and the team here have risen to. I am now ready to concentrate my passions back into one of my other interests, my music.” Stuart Russell will stay on and lead the fleet in the area: “The taxi industry is in my blood, I am as much in love with this role as I was 20 years ago, and now with the support and help of the Take Me Group, I know we can offer our customers a better service, look after our drivers needs, and help the office crews deliver an improved service.” David Hunter added: “UTG is fully cloud-based using stateof-the-art technology. We look forward to welcoming the group to Take Me and plan for further expansion in the area with two more companies about to be bolted on to UTG.”
Take Me Group pledges to switch fleets to electric by 2029 Mark Bursa Fast-growing Take Me Group is planning to convert all its company-owned cars to electric vehicles in the next two years, and to put in place schemes to allow its owner-drivers to go electric too. Chief executive David Hunter (pictured) said the plan was to have a 100% electric offering by 2029. Take Me group currently has 16 subsidiaries operating around 2,000 vehicles, and further acquisitions will take that up to 2,700 by the end of July. The first stage is to change the fleet of “between 200 and 300” company-owned vehicles to EVs, which will be achieved through funding from venture capitalist MBH Group, which has backed some of the Take Me acquisitions.
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“MBH is into ESG (environment, social and corporate governance) and they want us to go greener,” Hunter said. However, the move has to be linked to expansions in infrastructure. “Some of our sites have charge points, but not all,” he added. The other problem is the availability of vehicles: “We have some Tesla Model 3s and Model Ys on order but they are expensive. Volkswagen is quoting us 18-month lead times on ID models.” Getting owner-drivers to switch will be achieved through setting up deals with suppliers such as Splend, which has so far focused on ridehail drivers but has said it wants to expand into traditional private hire fleets. “We’ll also offer lower commissions to drivers who go electric,” Hunter said.
JUNE 2022
