‘General haulage’ best describes the work carried out by DR Macleod. The distinctive liveried trucks travel between the central belt, the Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland. Kevin Swallow travelled to the Isle of Lewis to speak with the boss about delivering life’s essentials to communities and what the future holds.
This feature was published in Transport News, December 2018.
It’s late August 2018 and the Saturday morning ferry out of Ullapool, on the west coast of the Scottish Highlands, is being loaded in the driving rain. Launched in 2015, the MV Loch Seaforth is run by CalMac and bound for Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis.
It sails twice a day and can carry 700 passengers and 143 cars, at night it runs as a dedicated freight crossing that can carry up to 20 trucks.
Source: Tom Cunningham.
Donald MacLeod, known as DR, has been using this route with his trucks since 1981. It’s of no surprise that there are two of his blue and yellow trucks on this particular crossing. The two and half hour voyage is smooth and without incident.
‘The ferry has been pretty consistent,’ he explained, ‘back when I started it was one crossing a day. The boats have got gradually bigger, from the MV Suilven, which was replaced in 1995 by the MV Isle of Lewis, and then the MV Loch Seaforth.’
The state-owned operator CalMac run a monopoly service on this route, although that has been occasionally challenged in the past by private enterprise running freight-dedicated crossings.
The head office for DR MacLeod is still on the island, where he lives. More than two-thirds of the general haulage work involves Lewis, Isle of Harris and The Uists.
‘Mainland work is a small percentage of what we do. There is some growth in that potentially, but I have found over the years chasing work can be counterproductive. All you are doing is forcing the price down and there aren’t any winners. Growth for the sake of growth doesn’t necessarily add to profitability and I don’t see the point of that,’ he explained.
Through the years he has added three depots to the business. Twenty-five years ago, the company opened a site in Inverness to act as a hub to serve traffic between the islands and the central belt. At the time DR ran around 20 trucks, and the new site helped with load consolidation and recruitment.
‘Inverness is our nearest main city for goods and services, and where many of the truck dealers are based; it was a logical step,’ he said, and added: ‘By 2000 the company had increased in size, so we started to rent a site in Glasgow. Two years ago, we bought a 3.5-acre site there that we will develop in the future.’
The fourth site on North Uist at Lochmaddy opened in 2007. To reach it trucks use the ferry from Uig on the Isle of Skye direct to Lochmaddy.
More than 27,000 people live on the Outer Hebrides, and in 2017 more than 218,000 people visited (source: Tourism Outer Hebrides 2020).
THE FERRIES
Most of the goods required pass through Stornoway, however it can be a fragile link and DR believes there is an appetite for a separate freight crossing. ‘Transport Scotland Ferries, which advises the Scottish government, say they currently do not have scope within their current budget for an additional service,’ he explained.
Source: DR Macleod.
Customers in the Western Isles feel short-changed by comparison to the level of investment by Scottish government put into freight services for routes to the Northern Isles.
‘In my opinion, this is a political decision taken largely due to the effectiveness of their local MSPs (Member of the Scottish Parliament), which is to their credit,’ he added.
While the night-time freight crossing currently serves the needs of DR MacLeod by bringing trailers onto the island, the general public need to cross as well.
For the past two summers the ferries have been full. DR MacLeod said: ‘There isn’t sufficient capacity for everybody especially at peak times on the route because you only have one vessel. A second vessel prioritised for freight could also do an additional passenger run.’
As Transport News went to press the precarious nature of operating a lone ferry on one crossing without a backup became apparent. A few weeks prior to my crossing, and then again in October, the MV Loch Seaforth suffered ‘technical difficulties’.
On the 14th October 2018 it crashed into the pier at Stornoway. While no one was injured, it led to significant delays as traffic sought alternative routes from Harris.
The crash damaged the mechanism that operates the bow doors, which is still not repaired at the time of writing. It has led to significant delays. Now all traffic can only be loaded through the stern (the back of the boat) at both piers.
Angus Campbell, chairman of CalMac community board, admitted that ‘there is no resilience’ in the service should something go wrong.
‘All ferry disruptions impact negatively on our business,’ said DR, ‘and it does strengthen the case for an additional/alternative ferry service.’
Part of the Stornoway Port Authority short term plan is to ‘ensure Stornoway can accommodate a freight ferry’.
DR felt any decision would depend on increased volume, and, in particular, he makes reference to the ‘interconnector cable’ project. For more than a decade plans for a subsea cable linking renewable energy projects on the Isle of Lewis to the National Grid on the mainland have been put forward.
DR MacLeod has previously been involved in the transportation of materials and plant relating to several small scale renewable energy projects, which supplement the power received from the National Grid.
‘The cable would bring a significant economic benefit to the island,’ he explained, ‘as it would require building the infrastructure and delivering the construction materials. In which case an alternative ferry service providing additional capacity would be essential.’
Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) submitted a ‘final needs’ case to Ofgem to deliver a single 600megawatt subsea circuit from Arnish on Lewis to Dundonnell on the Scottish mainland, which would connect to SSEN’s Beauly substation near Inverness via underground cables.
If authorised by Ofgem, the Western Isles Radial Connector could be laid by 2023. However, the project is dependent on two planned large-scale wind farm projects, Stornoway Wind Farm and Uisenis Wind Farm, securing subsidy from the UK government next year.
THE FLEET
In 1981 Donald MacLeod was 24 when he decided to become an owner-driver. He bought a Leyland Reiver six-wheeler flatbed and handballing, roping and sheeting became a way of life.
Source: Renault Trucks.
From the outset he started carrying anything that needed moving throughout Scotland and beyond, but it would be the central belt that provided the most work. ‘I started with one lorry and gradually grew the fleet,’ he said.
By the mid-1980s DR MacLeod had bought a Motorola ‘brick’ mobile phone when it first came out for around £1,500. ‘It only worked in two or three places and I realised I was losing potential work by being out of the office. From then on, I became more anchored to the office landline phone,’ he said.
‘At that time there was a lot of small independent hauliers like ourselves but the biggest at the time operator was MacBrayne Haulage, which was the last UK state-owned haulage company.’
It was sold in 1985 to Kildonan Transport from Turriff, Aberdeenshire. The Government’s decision to sell MacBrayne Haulage stemmed from a Monopolies and Mergers Commission audit on Caledonian MacBrayne (CalMac) in 1983, which suggested the haulage company enjoyed too close a relationship with the ferry line, notably in the form of preferential shipping rates.
‘Kildonan Transport decided to focus on their mainland haulage operation and transferred the island business to ourselves in the early 1990s, including their depot on the old pier in Stornoway and their employees,’ DR recalled.
‘Operating from the pier was ideal as that was where the ferry berthed, and we would probably still be there today but for the construction of a new ro-ro ferry terminal. This project included the demolition of our warehouse on the pier, so by necessity we moved to our current premises on Island Road.’
The current fleet of trucks sits at 55, with 45 tractor units and 10 rigids, as well as 20 light commercials. The trailer fleet consists of more than 90 trailers, which includes traditional fridge and curtainsider trailers, through to low-loaders, moving floors, tankers and the several trombones for abnormal-sized loads.
It’s a mixed fleet with trucks replaced at around the five-year mark, with some retained to work on the islands where the mileage is limited.
In the past two years DR MacLeod has bought new high-spec trucks from an array of different manufacturers. Three new ‘next generation’ Scania S450 6x2s joined the fleet in 2017 retaining a long association between the haulier and the Swedish brand, as there is with DAF Trucks. Two new XFs were bought onto the fleet 12 months ago from Norscot Truck & Van.
The most recent deal has been for 10 new FH.500 tractor units with Globetrotter cabs from Volvo Truck & Bus Centre North & Scotland.
The company has been buying Volvo for three decades since the days of the F7, F10 and F12 Volvo trucks, before investing in the first of the then new 6×2 FH12 in 1994 in the north of Scotland.
Previously DR MacLeod had operated Mercedes-Benz Atego trucks and Sprinter vans, last year he bought his Actros 2551 6×2 tractor unit with a GigaSpace cab, which was sourced from Caledonian Truck & Van.
At the time of the purchase DR MacLeod said the decision owed much to the persistence of Andrew Rennie, the dealer’s head of truck sales. DR added: ‘We also trialled a demonstrator for a week and it compared favourably with our established trucks.’
Today the business employs approximately 100 full-time employees supplemented by more than 25-part time staff and agency drivers when required.
His wife Maggie is the company secretary and holds both a heavy goods license and the Certificate of Professional Competence for Transport Managers (Road Haulage). She worked with DR from the outset on the financial side of the business.
Their son Mark MacLeod also works in the business. Part of his remit is overseeing vehicle data analysis and management quality systems like the ISO:9002 for quality assurance, ISO:14001 for environmental and ISO:18001 that outlines requirements for occupational health and safety management systems.
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