Changing with the times

Rayanne Baker visited the mother and son team behind Accrington-based Cranberry Coachways. Christine and Martyn Dixon spoke about the acquisition of some new vehicles, their journey in the industry and the changes they are making to the business

After being made redundant in 1990, Christine Dixon and her then-husband founded Cranberry Coachways. [wlm_nonmember][…]

[/wlm_nonmember] [wlm_ismember]

The company started small with just four vehicles, then in May 2000 – after Christine and her husband split – she bought the company.

She grew the business further on her own and had been operating it solo for 18 years.

The company has grown to offer a fleet of around 13 vehicles, and Christine’s son Martyn has come on board to help run the business.

“It wasn’t something that I was planning to do, or ever even thought about. I’ve always been in the motor trade but not as an operator,” said Christine.

Hostess turned operator
Christine started her career in the industry hosting: “My brother did continental coach driving and one day they were stuck for a hostess, so I took my holidays and went hosting in Spain,” she explained.

“That’s what started my career, and then one day there was a driver who was ill and got rushed off and I just thought, ‘well if I had my license I could have driven the coach back’.”

Christine didn’t stop at that thought, and went on to take her coach driving licence test as a bet in 1988: “The drivers and the men said ‘no, you can’t do it.’ So I did, never thinking that I’d end up where I am today.”

This led Christine to work for the Statesman for a couple of years before the company was sold.

“That’s when I decided to start Cranberry Coachways up with Martyn’s Dad,” Christine said.

“I still go out and drive now. We’ve just started doing continental work, and I’ve been to Disney a couple of times. I’ve been driving and hosting at the same time. I still enjoy being a hostess and I enjoy driving; it has its ups and downs but I still like it after 30 years.”

Natural progression

With Christine’s son Martyn having recently joined the operation, Christine spoke about how he is helping to steer the direction of the company as the industry changes.

“He’s changed a lot of things because we’ve started doing continental work now in addition to private hire work. We just started Cranberry Coachways Corporate last year to do the continental work,” Christine explained.

“The school contracts have just dried up, and we’ve been undercut so much with them that we’ve had to chase business. As a result of this, we’ve started to do more private hire work and tour work instead.”

Christine explained that the company currently has a lot of private hire work coming in, much of which is repeat custom: “I have a lot of regular customers, mainly schools. We do a lot of private hire work, taking schools to Blackpool and Manchester, on days out and geography trips and PGL holidays, and over the years they just keep coming back.”

However, regarding continental tour work, Martyn explained that the company is only just starting out, and is currently in the process of building working relationships with customers: “We’ve got quite a lot of ski work booked in through the winter time, and for us it’s about building relationships with customers.

“If you do a good job they will keep coming back to you year after year. It’s all about getting to know how they work and for them to know how we work.”

Christine and Martyn said that the price point, well cared-for vehicles, friendly drivers and close relationships with customers all play a part in the amount of repeat custom they see.

Christine explained that at Christmas time she will buy all of her repeat customers a box of chocolates.

“I wipe Tesco out!” she said.

“Last year I had about 60 boxes of chocolates in the back of my car. I started doing this when I only had three or four coaches, and I thought it would be a nice gesture.

“I bought chocolates for the regular customers and then that built up, and now it’s got to the stage where it’s getting a bit ridiculous, but I can’t not get them.

“I personally go round to the businesses delivering the chocolates – it takes me about four days – if they’re quite far away I’ll send them a card and a branded pen or something little.

“It’s quite embarrassing though, walking out of Tesco with about 60 boxes of chocolates,” she mused.

Christine mentioned that, despite the uptake in continental work, Cranberry is not interested in actively seeking to make the business bigger.

“I don’t really want to go any bigger, I’m not getting any younger and Martyn wants to take over the business, so it would be his decision if we were to expand in the future. I don’t think I could expand, because it’s been my baby for 30 years, I’ve grown with the business.

“I keep saying to Martyn ‘sometimes the bigger the business is, the more headaches it causes.’ We do alright as we are and we get good feedback, so I think we’re better off keeping it how it is. It’s not too small or too big, but it’s the right size to look after.”

Eye-catching livery
Although they do not plan to grow the operation significantly, Cranberry has recently acquired some new vehicles for the uptake in continental tour work.

This breaks something of a new vehicle drought for the operator, which had previously not bought a brand new vehicle in around 20 years.

“I’ve just bought another new coach, after I bought one in November last year – which was the first new one I’ve ever had,” said Christine.

“I bought a new Yutong, which is six months old now. Then about 10 weeks ago I bought a new Tourismo from EvoBus to do tour work with, because I think if you’re going to go abroad and do tour work you need the newer vehicles.”

Speaking about the new vehicle choices, Christine added: “I like Mercedes-Benz. For nearly all the years I’ve been operating, most of our vehicles have been Mercedes-Benz and even the vehicles that are not have got Mercedes-Benz engines. I just find them so reliable and I’ve had no problem. The 37-seater Yutong that I got brand new from Pelican, has proved to be very good also. I did look at a Mercedes-Benz, but felt we would get much more for our money with the Yutong.”

Christine explained that once Cranberry had acquired the new vehicles, they were to be painted in the company’s colours.

“For the liveries we use Blackpool Coach services, who do most of the painting for us, and we use West Coast Trim, which is part of that company, to do the interiors,” said Christine.

“We only changed over to our current brown colour about eight years ago.” Christine mentioned that the colour choice was inspired by a 4×4 that she and Martyn had both seen and agreed would be the colour they chose for their own fleet. “We actually spoke to the company which owned the 4×4 and asked for the colour, which is how we ended up with that. The livery was done by Tim and it’s just all matched.”

A friendly bunch 

When asked how he felt about the growth the business has seen, and the size of the operation he will inherit, Martyn said: “I don’t really think of it like that to be honest. You just get on and do the job, it’s not until you stand back and look at it all and think ‘how did that happen.’ It’s so easy to expand.”

Christine echoed this sentiment, adding: “It’s very rare when you come to the garage and all the coaches are in. But at Christmas – because I always close down for a week at Christmas – we have all the coaches here and you just stand there and think ‘wow.’ I don’t know what else I’d do now.”

Martyn commented that his age has made him realise just how few young people are training, or have trained to work in the industry.

“There’s no young blood coming in to the industry,” he said.

“Most of the young people coming in have joined the industry through family. I’ve got a few friends that are of a similar age to me that have decided on HGV driving.”

Christine suggested that there should be more incentives to encourage younger people to train for industry jobs: “I think the Government could really do with incentives. Like a help scheme where they’d put you through the training and you’d pay it off once you’re earning and in employment.”

However, the lack of young people joining the industry doesn’t seem to be a big issue for this operator just yet.

Christine seemed very content with her staff and spoke very highly of them, saying: “All my drivers here are reliable, they never let me down, and that means a lot because it means we work really well together. Without them I’d have nothing.”

This sentiment also extends to the mechanics, who do nearly all of the operator’s repairs in house.

“We have two full time mechanics; they do six-weekly inspections and they do the walkarounds. They just repair them as it’s needed,” Christine said.

“We also do maintenance for a couple of other operators as well. And we have brake testing at the top of the street. We all work together round here and we send the vehicles in every three months. We’ve got quite a few coach companies round this area and to be fair we do all help each other out, it makes the job easier.”

Christine also discussed how the business evolved into a bit of a family affair: “Along with Martyn and myself, my brother is also one of the mechanics and my niece is now the secretary, so it’s become quite a family business.

“All my drivers have been with me for years,” Christine added.

“We’re god parents to one of our drivers’ youngest children, and he said ‘I’ll be here until I retire’ and he’s only in his 40s now. So we don’t have a massive staff turn around. We have seven regular lads. Some of them are self-employed, but we just tend to keep to the same drivers because they know us, we know them and we all work well together.”

The future
Both Martyn and Christine expressed concerns that, if the industry doesn’t start to change, many good operators are likely to stop doing school contract work under the current bidding system.

“I think the bidding system needs to change. There are so many companies and it’s so cut throat that it comes down to penny pinching as to how little you’re prepared to work for,” Martyn said.

“Customers want a top notch service, but they don’t want to pay the prices. This means that the operators they’re using aren’t looking after the coaches. But then the customers complain when the job isn’t done right. You get what you pay for.”

Christine echoed this, stating: “Customers want brand new coaches for a second hand coach price. Somehow in the next few years it has got to change.

“If customers want a safe vehicle, then they’ve got to pay the money to make sure that we can afford to maintain them. School contracts used to be my main work. I had 10 contracts at one time, but now I’m down to two and they’re finished next year and I’ll be lucky to get them back. You’ve got to keep changing with the times.”

The disappearing stag party
Martyn explained that earlier this year he drove for a stag party, which mysteriously vanished.

“I took this stag party of about 20 men to Manchester airport, and they were quite calm,” he said.

“They’d paid me the day before we went, and when I came to pick them back up on Monday – after they’d gone for a long weekend – I sat there at 0100hrs in the morning, and nothing, no one came. I knew the plane had come in because I checked the flight. But I never found them, we lost the passengers.

“They never even rang or anything. I waited for two hours, and I thought ‘I can’t wait any longer.’ We tried ringing them and we’ve never heard anything since. That’s the strangest thing we’ve ever had. You could understand if they didn’t pay for it on the way out, but they had paid for it before we took them. It was an English tour so they came back, it’s quite curious.”

[/wlm_ismember]