Silver_Surfer:
£6.64 per hour? Get yourselves down the local Mcdonalds lads, i’d rather be flipping burgers than tanking around in a truck for that money.Not insuring his invoices against default equals gross mis-management in my opinion.
To be honest I never did. Cost me less than £2000.00 in 20 odd years. Most of which was a poorly 
calculated risk.
a bit in todays northern echo.
DCB TRANSPORT:
a bit in todays northern echo.
it was always said too big to quick, just like a container firm thats suddenly shot up with depots and trucks everywhere.
DCB TRANSPORT:
a bit in todays northern echo.
Oh dear God - pass the sick bucket 
Bet he’s still sitting pretty in a whacking great gaff and pots of cash stashed away. Bet they were tears of mirth really 
That Northern Echo article says it was a £140k bad debt that brought them down. They had about 150 trucks if what Steve Ward was quoted in a recent roadtransport.com article is correct (he said that they had taken over 60 trucks which was 40% of the fleet).
Now if each truck is earning 2500quid a week, they had a turnover from the haulage operation of roughly £375k/week.
So the bad debt in question is less than half of one weeks earnings.
Surely any business that couldn’t survive that is in very poor shape anyway.
Paul
repton:
That Northern Echo article says it was a £140k bad debt that brought them down. They had about 150 trucks if what Steve Ward was quoted in a recent roadtransport.com article is correct (he said that they had taken over 60 trucks which was 40% of the fleet).Now if each truck is earning 2500quid a week, they had a turnover from the haulage operation of roughly £375k/week.
So the bad debt in question is less than half of one weeks earnings.
Surely any business that couldn’t survive that is in very poor shape anyway.
Paul
Looked more like the Tax man has had enough of his excuses and shut him down
No point crying about £140k if you owe double that straight back out
Wonder how much more he actually owed out?
Soldier z:
Looked more like the Tax man has had enough of his excuses and shut him down
No point crying about £140k if you owe double that straight back outWonder how much more he actually owed out?
Don’t let detail get in the way of a good sob story though 
PAYE
Pay as You Earn income tax and national insurance contributions due in the last twelve months before the bankruptcy order;
- VAT (value-added tax) due in the six months prior to the order
- Accrued holiday pay owed to employees;
- Wages of employees due in the last four months before the bankruptcy order (subject to a current maximum amount of £800 per employee)
How much is left over for drivers and office staff?
As another ‘Loyal’ driver, dumped by this mismanaged company, a few helpful worms to my fellow sufferers.
Read everything you can about the crash. Check out the wording on every piece of paper, or form, you can get.
The only way you will see any money you are owed is to do it all right.
Get the union to give you advice, if you were strong armed in to it. At least get your moneys worth out of them.
Don’t expect to get any realistic help from the company. We are on our own, with the sharks circling.
Thursday is the day of the court hearing. once that goes through then Bulmers will be no more.
Then an Insolvency Practitioner or an Official Receiver will be appointed, making it official.
We have all heard the various reasons for the failure, this time. Basically it is a cash flow problem.
It was comeing in, but the non return valve wasn’t letting it back out!
I was lucky enough not to be offered a new job with the same mismanagement team.
I hope Steve Ward keeps a close eye on how his investment is being run.
Good luck to all who went down on the ‘good ship’ Bulmers, AGAIN! 
Wheel Nut:
Soldier z:
Looked more like the Tax man has had enough of his excuses and shut him down
No point crying about £140k if you owe double that straight back outWonder how much more he actually owed out?
Don’t let detail get in the way of a good sob story though
PAYE
Pay as You Earn income tax and national insurance contributions due in the last twelve months before the bankruptcy order;
- VAT (value-added tax) due in the six months prior to the order
- Accrued holiday pay owed to employees;
- Wages of employees due in the last four months before the bankruptcy order (subject to a current maximum amount of £800 per employee)
How much is left over for drivers and office staff?
The question is how is it that the tax departments so often think that they’re owed enough to drive a firm into liquidation when to be insolvent it’s obvious that a firm has more cost liabilities than incomes but costs are’nt taxable and there’s no way that the tax office can be owed all of the incomes,assuming that a firm was generating sufficient incomes to cover it’s gross wage costs 
.
I feel sorry for all the staff and drivers, I through my Business have access to all
Ltd companies accounts in the UK.( If you PM me I will do searches for you guys on companies you may intend to work for Although this information is not in the Public domain FOR FREE ! )
I can add that after looking at there nett profit for there last trading Year and taking into
account the size for the fleet and there annual revenue,
It is no surprise to me that they have gone bust again when the company is not even making 70K Profit Nett
the margins are too slim to overcome any form of non payment from debtors this is why they have gone bust
they must be working for peanuts.
So flashy high spec motors with contracts definitely dont pay bills !
What a sad world Transport is now, Glad I am out of it but still retain an interest in it, thats the best way i think
Regards
To you all
Kenny
roadtransport.com/Articles/2 … e-pack.htm
Looks like J.B will be loosing more than his business… maybe some people should give the guy a break !
He did he best to salvage what has been the last 20 odd years of his life keeping over 200 people in a job in the meantime for the past two years.
Container haulage margins are constantly been squeezed but the big companies refuse to pay what is needed to make a profit… They dictate a rate to you and you either accept it and do the work / dont accept it and dont get the work or have already done the job before they tell you what your been paid. Your lucky if you make 5% profit in this game unless you have the finances to stand 90 days payment terms and enough work that your then rip off the little guys subbing to you.
I’m sure they wont be the last company to go bust this year !
give the guy a break im sure several drivers would he gave his mate mr ward one for sure …
lets hope jb can go ski-ing again like the last time he closed sod everyone else
im just of too the dentist as my teeth got kicked in on friday thanks jb
oh well as one door closes another one opens
HAIRYGORILLA:
give the guy a break im sure several drivers would he gave his mate mr ward one for sure …
Maybe it could be more like a poisoned chalice!
Give the guy a break indeed
The last 18 years and the last two years are such different stories. When Bulmers started they certainly didn’t employ anything like 200 drivers, more like 20 for many years
being close to me, i do hear things… do not doubt J Bulmers sincerty at all but would be interested to hear about his reasons over the last few weeks to spend a lot of time in Wards offices, and also if to make up for his loss of income he is willing to accept a job within Wards in any capacity
Now rumours are rife and ex Bulmers employees are leaking stuff like a sieve, but unless proof is shown they will be deleted, in the mean time I doubt that the haulage industry has seen the last of J Bulmer
the thing i cant understand is that he was doing the same work when he closed this time as he was doing before the pre pack last time, he knew the rates were crap then so why did he think he could make money this time around doing the same work
Although there has not been any official confirmation of any possible position at Ward’s for Mr Bulmer it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest as Bulmer and Ward are two peas in a pod in many ways. They’re both from Malton originally (or at least from villages within a stones throw of Malton), they’re both sons of Farmers and they built their haulage companies up at near enough the same time as each other.
I just hope that whatever work Wards have taken on is profitable enough and that it doesn’t lead Wards the same way Bulmers went.
Paul
repton:
Although there has not been any official confirmation of any possible position at Ward’s for Mr Bulmer it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest as Bulmer and Ward are two peas in a pod in many ways. They’re both from Malton originally (or at least from villages within a stones throw of Malton), they’re both sons of Farmers and they built their haulage companies up at near enough the same time as each other.I just hope that whatever work Wards have taken on is profitable enough and that it doesn’t lead Wards the same way Bulmers went.
Paul
Has JB lost the Farm now?
Wouldn’t be the 1st Farmer to try haulage and lose the farm if they have. In fact I think if you look up Icarus in the dictionary you will probably find he was a farmer/haulier. 
chaversdad:
the thing i cant understand is that he was doing the same work when he closed this time as he was doing before the pre pack last time, he knew the rates were crap then so why did he think he could make money this time around doing the same work
And does Steve Ward really want any more headache?
This was the position in 2009
Well here we go again I WAS A BULMERS DRIVER based at the Ipswich depot. On friday the 4th Feruary 2011 our office recieved a call at 13:00 hrs to say the company had closed, within two hours two van loads of drivers from the north east had removed all our trucks (16 units) and all the skeletal trailers belonging to greys rentals.
All our timesheets and weekly pods/cmrs were just dumped on the desk and the office vacated.
This was definately preplanned. Apparently according to our office this closure is to do with the inland revenue nothing else. A liquidator is being appointed today.
I enjoyed working for Bulmers but I am extremely angry at the way this company has treated its employees.
I worked 72 hrs plus 5 nights out THEY ARE NOT GOING TO PAY OUR WAGES, I would happily walk away if I was paid, there was no notice either. The drivers in Ipswich worked all week, they must have known they could not pay us,but I am pretty sure he will be paid from the work we did that week. I have managed to contact the head office in Eston road, but we are being fobbed off,apparently we have to claim through a goverment backed fund,this will be a max of £400 only. No P45,No help, thankyou Mr Bulmer.I know he is still trading again under a different name but I cant say here and its not just Wards, the truck I used to drive is working in Bury St Edmunds on a contract the same man had. Something here smells very fishy and at the moment I am personally looking into the lagality of what he has done.As for those who say give him abreak I DONT THINK SO,purely because he has walked away again and not paid drivers wages causing us all huge financial problems,some of my work colleagues cant even pay there mortgage this month. IF YOUR READING THIS JONATHAN think pay your drivers wages owes and then walk away head held high.
I will say I am the lucky one here I have got another job start 1st next month with a very high profile company with good wages, I have been a driver for 29 years with a clean licence this helped,but I still have to go without an income for 4 weeks. Some of my friends have not been so lucky,but I keep asking around for them? Good Luck eh!
I hope this helps with the speculators, this is how it happen.
Thankyou
Michael
There have been bulmers DAF’s going in and out of levers all week with samskip boxes on!!! empties in and loads out!!