14 | PROFILE
McCulla Ireland ‘Keeping it cool’
T
hanks to its striking livery, McCulla Refrigerated Transport is one of Ireland’s most familiar transport names. In reality though, little is known about the company itself. The business has traded steadily since 1969, and if a word was needed to describe McCulla’s operations for over four decades, that would be steady. The company has never been known for extravagance, and has always travelled steadily down the quality, rather than the flamboyant road. Th is approach could be the reason it has outlived many of its competitors over the years, and one reason it received the Fleet Transport International Haulier of the Year 2016. To get a further insight into McCulla, we spoke with the award winning company’s Transport Manager, Brian Beattie at McCulla’s Dublin offices in Ballymount. Brian is also an award winner - his in-depth knowledge of how McCulla Ireland operates was one of the main reasons he won the coveted Fleet Transport ‘Transport Manager of the Year 2016’ in September. From its foundations as a regular haulier, McCulla has evolved into a complete logistics provider, counting many household names in the food retailing, restaurant and pharmaceutical sectors among its
customers. Often these companies demand bespoke transport solutions to meet their particular needs. If some of the solutions required are outside what would normally be described as McCulla’s usual transport and cold-store division activities, the company always manages to meet such requests in its stride. Th is is clearly demonstrated with the creation of Certa. Certa is McCulla Ireland’s special services division established to meet the particular requirements of the Pharmaceutical and airfreight sectors. While the nature of much of this work could be called temperature controlled groupage, in many ways it goes beyond that, and moves into the realms of own account haulage for individual customers. These customers receive a level of service that previously they could only have achieved by running their own fleet. The advantage for McCulla is that offering a highly specialised transport service of a highly specialised product to a select group of customers reduces the potential threat from the competition. However, such exacting levels of service can only be achieved if the structures are in place within the company. It also requires the staff to work with - and believe in - the structures. Brian feels that training is key to achieving top performance, i.e. if the person is competent and able to do their job well, then they will perform better. Consequently in McCulla Ireland, the best performing drivers receive performance rewards. This helps to encourage continued positive performance, and it also allows time for the in-house driver trainer to work with those drivers who are not performing to their full potential. Close monitoring of on-the-road performance via Bluetree Telematics, and in the office through a series of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) ensure a high customer service level is maintained. Constant monitoring quickly highlights any problems, allowing them to be dealt with and resolved before they become an issue. The latest information technology is widely used throughout the company and plays a significant role in the day-to- day running of
FLEETTRANSPORT | DEC 15/JAN 16