Are the pallet systems not the big earner everyone thought a couple of years ago?
TAG Transport last month and now Paxton Distribution have failed - not the first and deffo won’t be the last. Hopefully the companies taking over their postcode work will take on additional drivers made redundant by these failed companies.
I guess the pallet system is good if the company has a good customer base sending out a lot of pallets but it must be easy to have an inbalance, i.e more being delivered out than collected. It would seem that members don’t get paid for deliveries but keep all the revenue from the collections.
Local haulier to us were founder members of Pallex, made losses year after year, pulled out of Pallex and are making a profit once again, so, there is something amiss somewhere.
If you are getting at least £50 a pallet and 12 pallets on your truck and the multi drop delivery points are close together yes you can still make profit out of the pallet network. But once you end up in the back of beyond or a housing estate, a daily minium mileage of 200 miles and start bringing deliveries back for the next day the economics don’t look so good. 
Andover Transport are also in administration, I think the bulk of their work was a pallet network.
I think hauliers have fallen into the trap of using pallet networks as their source income. I was always led to believe that the pallet networks came about as a kind of co-operative to allow hauliers to shift the odd one or two pallets from regular customers that wouldn’t make economical sense to send on their own motors. Hence adopting a parcel carrier type ethos for ad-hoc pallets.
I guess if your regular customers haven’t got the ad-hoc stuff to shift, you won’t make much money from pallet networks, you also need a strong customer base in the first place to take enough freight into the hub.
we did it at our place for about 6 months then realised it wasnt making any money so we jacked it.
Did that Hilary Duval or whatever her name is, set up a pallet exchange■■? She’s made millions from it
Did a couple of days on agency for Woodrush in Pulloxhill, seems that they do alright out of the pallet networks because their trunk trailers are always full in both directions. I was pulled in to do a day in an Artic, a day in a FM rigid and a day in a 7.5t. On all three days, I worked full loads, except for a single collection in the FM. One assumes that they earn their coin from the direct loads and just use the pallet network stuff to fill the vehicles up.
Could be wrong, funny enough they didn’t feel the need to brief an agency driver on the full details of their business model.
howatsi:
If you are getting at least £50 a pallet and 12 pallets on your truck and the multi drop delivery points are close together yes you can still make profit out of the pallet network. But once you end up in the back of beyond or a housing estate, a daily minium mileage of 200 miles and start bringing deliveries back for the next day the economics don’t look so good.
Try £17 per pallet. That was what pallex paid my old firm, Matthews Haulage in 2008. When networks were first around, you made your money charging outbound. Now the margins are so tight they actually lose money on the inbound. 3 lorries averaged £205 revenue with a cost of around £240. If you’re not charging enough or aren’t putting enough volume in, it’s a slippery slope. But as long as the local builders gets a 1ton bag of ballast to carlisle for £40…
degsy4wheels:
Did that Hilary Duval or whatever her name is, set up a pallet exchange■■? She’s made millions from it
Yes. She set up Pallex.
damoq:
degsy4wheels:
Did that Hilary Duval or whatever her name is, set up a pallet exchange■■? She’s made millions from itYes. She set up Pallex.
After first working at Palletways when that started 
The same system was used for parcels years ago, the likes of Interlink, Nightfreight, which were franchises, you made your money on the parcels you put in to the system and lost on the ones you had to deliver.
Washwipe:
The same system was used for parcels years ago, the likes of Interlink, Nightfreight, which were franchises, you made your money on the parcels you put in to the system and lost on the ones you had to deliver.
Absolutely spot on, the companies that try to make money on deliveries only or have way more pallets to deliver than they input will never make any money, simple average rate (there are a lot of variables!) is say £16 a pallet now with a rigid delivering you may get 12 deliveries on a single run out so that vehicle will earn £192 if your lucky, now will that pay for the driver fuel and vehicle for a day?
We live in a sparsley populated area of the UK but there seems to be half a dozen local firms chasing about on “pallet franchises” which I can’t see can be profitable,if it was one or two yes,but not the number there is.That dodgy looking bird Hilary ( ex Addams family!) seems to have caught the initial “crest of the wave” but I don’t think many of her “members” have enjoyed the same success because of the overcapacity of the pallet business now!! Cheers Bewick.
I thought quite a lot have capacity had stripped out already. Although joining a network is maybe the last gasp option of a struggling haulier.
I also wonder if loads have polarised into either full, or near full, loads and single pallets with nothing in between. What you really want is probably 2-4 drops on a trailer all going to roughly the same area and each customer paying the standard pallet tariff.
Slightly unrelated but, another weakness I often notice with a lot of outfits is seeing deckers as purely a trunking bit of kit. I’ve lost count of the number of times we’ve had 40-50 odd not particularly tall pallets <500kg a piece arrive on two different wagons from outfits that’ve definitely got deckers.
Are pallet networks more prone to damage than other truck networks?
There seems to be plenty of high value loads ripe for getting damaged all the time - so maybe that’s the reason for the dropout? 
Own Account Driver:
Slightly unrelated but, another weakness I often notice with a lot of outfits is seeing deckers as purely a trunking bit of kit. I’ve lost count of the number of times we’ve had 40-50 odd not particularly tall pallets <500kg a piece arrive on two different wagons from outfits that’ve definitely got deckers.
You need special training to tip a decker. Ratchet decks are different, with a full on double decker you really need a harness trained driver. I’m too fat for a decker’s top deck because I outweigh the safety harness limit. You would be better off running a 15 meter trailer than a 16"2’.
Where I’m working at the month, we are based at the pallet hub in ellistown (pallex) and there seems to be a lot of big hauliers that do freight in to there, and most seem to put a lot in to the network. I think that is the key putting a lot in, we put so much in to that network (can’t remember the figure) but I’m sure at christmas we were the 3rd biggest in putter to the network.
Wot we seem to do is use it to top up the loads from our customers, so we may end up with 4-5 drops roughly round the same area in an artic n it seems to pay ok.
For example, the other thursday I had this run, 5 pallets in to npton 1 drop, 3 pallets in to oxford 1 drop, then my last drop was in portsmouth 11 pallets, 1 drop, and the last drop was our customer who dnt want things in the network and the 1st 2 were used 2 top the load up replacing the need for a reload in this case I reloaded from cullina at lutterworth for the next day! and the whole run made 565, (not including the load from lutt) Now, I did 14 n half hrs that day (£8.50 for 10 hrs then £10 for the hrs after) , had a night out, and had to pay for parking… In ur ears, do u think that paid!!! We hav 4 artics that do this type of thing all the time, and apparently we make profit? Wot u think?
P.s we do have 8 rigids and 1 artic that do cover our local area btw…
We have pallets delivered to us,in west Cornwall,from the Midlands for £42.
I can’t see how this can pay the haulier.
The pallet has to be collected from the manufacturer,taken to the hauliers depot,transfered onto a night trunk,taken to the hub,unloaded sorted and re loaded at the hub,trunked to the delivering haulier,transferred to the delivery vehicle and then delivered to us all for £42■■?
By the time everyone’s having their part of the take,i can’t see how anyone is making money!
damoq:
degsy4wheels:
Did that Hilary Duval or whatever her name is, set up a pallet exchange■■? She’s made millions from itYes. She set up Pallex.
Hilary Devey - CEO Pall-Ex
She eats men for breakfast. 