Reader interview: ‘Don’t just dump trucks on us’
December 2nd 2008

Frank Key is a busy builders merchants in Nottingham. Established in 1907 it employs over 70 people, turning over £10million last year.

The firm’s operation is twofold – a DIY and home enthusiast ‘shopfront’ selling kitchen and bathroom products and a traditional builder’s merchant business to the rear, using yards, warehousing and a loading area. The firm runs six lifttrucks. Two Toyota’s, a 4t Combilift, and three JCB Teletruks, two a few years old and one brand new. At present, it also has another new Japanese truck sitting in the yard, supposedly on trial, but Samson isn’t impressed, so it remains anonymous.

“What bothers me,” says chairman Robert Samson, who has run the firm since 1974, “is that we’re sent a truck to test that doesn’t have a light on top. So an engineer has to come out before you’ve even used it. What does that tell you?” But it’s not the missing light that will see the truck going back to the supplier. “My lads aren’t exactly giants, and they keep hitting their heads on the roof bars every time they jump in. Even the smallest.”

One of the many thousands of SMEs that make up the volume of UK industry, Samson says, while the firm will tighten its belt over the next year, previous good trading conditions for the building sector and sensible management mean the company will weather the coming recession. (In fact, it has just bought another local business, Parker Severn, saving 10 jobs, illustrating the positive side of a slowdown for those in a position to gain from it.)

“I have maintained over a period of years a very high standard of equipment – no lorries or trucks are more than 4-5 years old,” says Sampson. “They’re not in constant use and are in relatively good condition. It’s highly unlikely I’m going to buy anything in the coming year: My equipment is quite capable of running for another two years: so we can ride out [a recession] even if it’s for two years.”

On the forklift front, Samson says there’s room for improvement from both manufacturers and dealers. Over the years the firm has used numerous trucks. But, Samson says in terms of value and longevity, nothing has ever matched his first forklift fleet.

“We bought our first forklifts in the early 80s – diesel Coventry Climax models, powered by the Maggie Deutz air cooled engine. They gave us incredible service and, 25 years on, all three trucks are still going – two on farms and one on a building site. Other than minor repairs, they cost nothing serious to run. Which is quite the opposite of some of the modern day forklifts...They were very simple and built like tanks.” He does, however, have one criticism: “The biggest failing of those old engines was that they didn’t like starting in cold weather...”

But Samson is happy with the firm’s new JCB – despite it turning up with a cooling system fault. “JCB’s global head of Teletruck came to see us, and the problem was rectified very quickly. We were hugely impressed.”

When the yard is busy, Samson says the JCB effectively does the work of two forklifts, unloading a suppliers lorry and reloading Robert Key’s own lorry side by side within a matter of minutes. “We’ve gained a reputation for turning around supplier’s lorries very quickly. Because of that, we’ve found that when there is a shortage of material we will get priority, because drivers know we will turn them around in ten or fifteen minutes. Not that it matters at the moment, but when there are shortages, it is a god-send.”

Samson is equally enthusiastic about his Combilift. “I never throught that such a complicated machine would be so reliable. I was proved very wrong. We leased the first unit. It was an excellent truck, very little went wrong, so when its lease term ran out, we bought the next one. It has proved one of the best all round trucks you could imagine. It is sophisticated, useful in so many different ways that we never imagined and in terms of timber handling, it’s fantastic.”

While Samson is unlikely to buy any new lifttrucks in the near future, he believes that if a manufacturer or national dealer chose to concertedly target the builders merchant market, they would reap the rewards.“I personally think the entire sector isn’t very well looked after. I’ve only got what I want by being bloody awkward.” Samson says some manufacturers are starting to target the trade, but more effort needs to be made. By way of example, Samson points to a recent buyer’s group meeting, where Toyota pitched “what it termed a ‘build-based’ truck”.

“Toyota explained elements such as sideshift, air cleaner, combination keypad etc.,” says Samson. “They had done some research and it looked a good truck. The fact that Toyota had bothered impressed me. But in general, everybody just seems to dump a truck with us and say ‘well, what do you think?’”

Food for thought, for manufacturers at least...