Excited about engineering

In the first instalment of a two-part interview, Jonathan Welch speaks to newly-retired Trentbarton Managing Director Jeff Counsell about his career in the bus industry.

Trentbarton is a name that many will know as one of the more forward-thinking operators out there, running services across a wide swathe of the East Midlands, centred on Derby and Nottingham and reaching as far as Chesterfield, Uttoxeter, Burton-on-Trent, Mansfield and Leicester. At its head since 2009 has been Jeff Counsell, who started his 24-year stint with the company a decade earlier as its Engineering Director.

Having worked hard to build up a strong local brand and enviable reputation for Trentbarton as a customer-focused, modern operator, it’s easy to imagine that leaving at a time when things are still struggling in the new post-pandemic reality could be difficult, but Jeff, a passionate believer in public transport, has a positive outlook on his career, as I found out when we met for a chat shortly before his last day as Managing Director. Jeff started off by telling me a little about his own background and how he found himself in the bus industry.

“I was born in what was South Lancashire, in a town named Tyldesley. I always had an interest in practical hobbies, I was never excited by academic subjects, except things like mechanical engineering. My father was an engineer down the mines,” Jeff explained. “He looked after conveyor belts, lifts, and other mechanical and hydraulic equipment. He was also practical around the house and maintained his own car. I used to enjoy watching him. He’d let me help, and I got a bug for it.

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“When I left school, I applied to a number of local companies for jobs. I really wanted to go into the army, the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, but my parents talked me out of that and suggested I apply to local garages. I didn’t see a long-term future in that, but the local bus company was Lancashire United Transport. I used to go to school on their buses. They had about 330 buses, with bases in Swinton, Atherton, Hindley and Liverpool.

“I used to see their buses with side adverts for jobs for drivers, conductors and mechanics. I applied, and they offered me a job. I started as an apprentice motor vehicle engineer 48 years and 7 months ago on 15 July 1974. I loved it, it was a massive difference from school, and a really good RTITB apprenticeship. You don’t appreciate it when you first start but then you realise it was structured, multi-disciplined. I quite enjoyed those studies as it related to something I liked doing.

“I was really happy with the job; at last, I could apply myself to my studies as it was something I could relate to. I did well because I enjoyed it. I had great support from my mum and dad, and liked the people I worked with.

“I stayed on as a fitter. I didn’t know at the time, but LUT was struggling financially. They were part of the long-term re-organisation and Passenger Transport Executive re-organisation in Greater Manchester. I think that was towards the end of my apprenticeship, when our paintshop started painting buses in SELNEC colours. That was the best thing that could have happened to me, but again you don’t know it at the time. We went from being quite insular and not incredibly innovative, although we did things well, to being part of a 2,500-bus operation across Manchester with a great training facility.”

Progression

Jeff said he was glad of the opportunities presented to him, even if he hadn’t always recognised them at the time. “If you did well as an apprentice, they would encourage you to stay on and do more Further Education as well as on the job training. I did my IMI, CPC, IRTE and CILT vocational examinations with success, followed by a degree in Management Studies up to MBA level. I always think ‘how lucky am I?’ Not everyone gets those opportunities.

”That’s when I started to appreciate that there’s more to life than just mending the buses. I began to think that there was more I could do than come to work and get covered in oil and grease that would give me more fulfilment – I was never bothered about getting dirty. There was an unwritten career progression from the shop floor. The next step up was a Vehicle Examiner, and I got that job. I had to go to Devonshire Street for the interview, and the job was based in the ‘West’ area. I was disappointed they didn’t ask me anything about mechanicals, they just took it for granted that I knew about the buses.

“That was based at Weaste three days a week, and at Princess Road two days a week. I didn’t even know where Weaste was but I took the job! I really enjoyed that, and learned a lot from the garage foreman. He’d been there a long time. After a short period of doing that, I got a job as a senior foreman. I was prepared to move around which did me good. I worked at Altrincham, Thameside, Princess Road, Northenden, Hyde Road, Frederick Road, Oldham, and the odd spell at Rochdale. I really enjoyed it.

“Deregulation came along, although there had already been a re-organisation as the business wasn’t performing as it should have been. I wouldn’t have known that then, as I wasn’t at board level, but you knew things weren’t right. One re-organisation saw me take over as Depot Engineer at Queens Road. I still reckon it was because nobody else wanted it, but I liked the people there, salt of the earth.

“We were all very excited about what impact Deregulation might have. The Labour-orientated GMPTA resisted Margaret Thatcher’s White Paper and wanted to keep hold of the business. They refused to split the business, they kept the four divisions. It was only much later when they were forced to split into GM Buses North and South that I went with the North company as Chief Engineer. Bill Bland took the equivalent role at GMB South.

“We had the biggest share of the business but the poorest performance. I remember when we bid to buy GM Buses North from the PTA, the package we put together was quite highly-priced, but we were pipped at the post by British Bus. I remember the British Bus guys shadowing me doing due diligence, then all of a sudden we were called to a meeting and told that the PTA was giving us another chance to buy the business. It was political of course, the trade unions threatening to kick up a fuss.

“I thought it was unfair as we knew by then what British Bus’ bid was. We had to enlist the support of venture capitalists to be able to meet the bid criteria. That was a terrible experience. VCs [venture capitalists] don’t care about the people that make the business tick. The senior management all took a pay cut. We sacrificed a lot. Board meetings became fraught as the venture capitalists just cared about their return. That would have been around 1993.”

Hard times and new pages

Moving into 1994, things didn’t improve. Jeff continued: “As senior managers, we had to invest ourselves as well. I was married with two young kids by then. After the first year, the venture capitalists said they wanted their money back after two years not five. It meant changes to working practices. We knew there had to be changes but it was going to take three to five years. We had a horrible eight months trying to push through changes. Some of the decisions we were forced to make left a bitter taste in my mouth.

“The change was needed, but not that quickly. It impacted people I’d shared a shop floor with. I worked pretty much every single day in 1994, Saturdays, Sundays, holidays. Looking back, it wasn’t worth it, but I was passionate about our business and our people.”

In such a long career, there are bound to be ups and downs, but Jeff can see beyond the downs. “For the vast majority of my career, I’ve had a really positive experience,” he continued. “But that was probably one of the worst times in terms of the business side.

“Towards the end of that period, First Bus started making advances to buy the business. More change, more re-organisation, you wonder whether they’ll want to bring in their own people. I was in my office one day and received a phone call to see if I’d be interested in a job as an Engineering Director for a bus company in the north-east of England. I said I would, not even asking what company was!

“That ended up with me moving to what was North East Bus, which was at the time owned by National Express’ Travel West Midlands. That was great, it was a new page. Everyone worked as one and clicked as a team. It was a 400-bus operation and a big patch because of the nature of the area.

“We knew when I joined that National Express was probably looking to sell, and after three years the Cowie Group bought us. We got on well with the guys there. Not long after that, Cowie merged with British Bus to form Arriva. As a consequence, North East Bus merged with Northumbria Motor Services, which was part of British Bus.”

Covering a patch reaching from Berwick to Whitby and into deepest North Yorkshire, there was a sense of history repeating itself, though, as the merger meant two people for every role. “Two MDs, two EDs, two FDs… another re-organisation. But Arriva was very good to me,” Jeff explained. “I was given the role of Deputy Engineering Director. I wasn’t happy but a pay increase went some way to compensate! I seldom went to the office in Sunderland, I mainly spent my time travelling around to depots.”

Another period of change and uncertainty followed. “But then I saw a job in Coach & Bus Week for Trent as Engineering Director. Like a lot of others in the industry, I’d always admired Trent, their approach to public transport, customer focus, vehicle quality and investment. As soon as I saw the job, I said to my wife ‘I really fancy that, I think they’d be a good company to work for long-term.’ I was fed up of the constant re-organisations. I came here in 1999 as Engineering Director.”

Trentbarton

Joining shortly after the company, part of the Wellglade Group, had taken over Loughborough-based Kinchbus, Jeff experienced a very different way of working. “Wellglade didn’t put anyone from Trent directly into Kinchbus after the take-over. Kinchbus had a great reputation as a quality operator that invested in low-floor vehicles. They competed very effectively against Arriva into Leicester. Gilbert Kinch, who founded Kinchbus, had built up a very successful business.

“We had a recruitment crisis in Loughborough in 2000. There are some big employers in the area. The business started under-performing, and I was asked to go down and look at the engineering side to see what could be done. I could see why it wasn’t performing. We had around 50% commercial and 50% supported services. Because of the driver shortage, we’d be dropping commercial stuff for fear of penalties if supported services didn’t run. That wasn’t right as most of the revenue came from the commercial work. I got involved with the team and, together with a root and branch review of each service, we put a longer term plan in to get rid of the supported services that soaked up labour but didn’t bring in much. Loughborough performs well again now, current driver shortage aside.

“In 2002 I became Director of Service Delivery. In a horrible twist of fate, Head of Operations Andrew Norman’s wife very sadly passed away. He had two young daughters at the time, so he needed to take a step back. I was asked to step in and look after operations as well as engineering. I got a lot out of that, both personally and professionally, and we built up a fantastic team.

“When our MD Brian King was looking to retire at the age of 65, I said I was interested in taking over if the opportunity came up. That was April 2009, and I’ve been Managing Director for the last 14 years,” Jeff said, bringing the potted history of his career up to date.

A wider perspective

Having discussed his career trajectory, our conversation moved on to some of the wider issues across the industry. A natural starting point, given Jeff’s history with SELNEC and GMPTE, was the current move towards franchising in Manchester. “My personal view is that I’m not a huge fan of franchising. I think it puts a cash limitation on the level of delivery. The service is only going to be as good as the amount of cash can buy. In the commercial, independent and free market, where you have competition, you are incentivised to innovate. I think we’ve been a good example of that at Trentbarton,” he said.

“That doesn’t always mean it’s going to be cheap, but what our customers tell us over and over again in our research is that the cost of travel represents value for money. Where we have competition our strategy has been to deliver more of the good stuff; we think people will choose us if we’re good. The basic product has to be right; it has to turn up on time, get you to your destination on time. But for us, our key is our drivers. We’re very particular about who we employ.

“I do think it was inevitable that the Metropolitan Mayors such as Andy Burnham would push for franchising for the sake of having overall control of networks and pricing. I can also see the industry in general will look back and see it as a good thing, because it’s testing the franchising model outside of London. Some politicians continue to point to London as being an exemplar model, ignoring the fact that pre-Covid it had £646m of subsidy pumped into it, and now the model is financially unsustainable in real terms.

“I think it’s good that it will demonstrate whether franchising is the right model or not – and in some areas it probably is, where perhaps quality isn’t what it could be.”

Picking up on the point about quality, I noted that operators such as Trentbarton, along with the likes of Go North East and Transdev’s Blazefield companies, which set the bar high have potentially had further to fall as a result of the industry-wide post-pandemic difficulties. How does Jeff feel about Trentbarton’s recovery so far, I asked. “At the end of March 2020, like for everyone else, our revenue dropped 90%. The first few hours and days, it was a case of ‘what do we do?’ We knew that for those 10% still travelling, there was something for us to go out and deliver. But carrying 100% of the costs for 10% of the revenue is just not viable. You can’t make those two ends meet when they’re so far apart.”

Support

“Thankfully, the Government stepped in really quickly otherwise it would have been much worse,” Jeff continued. “And while some people think we were just given money, what actually happened was the Government bought a level of service. We couldn’t make profit, we couldn’t pay dividends. But thank goodness they did step in. And through ongoing support, we’ve seen that slowly recover.

“We’re now at around 90% of fare paying passengers compared to pre-Covid, although it’s pointless comparing to then as things have changed so much we can’t really compare on a like for like basis, given we’ve reduced frequency on some services, we’ve withdrawn some services completely, and we’ve completely redesigned our Ilkeston network and gone from an 11-vehicle peak requirement to eight to take costs out. We did that by making customers transfer if they’re making a cross-Ilkeston journey. That’s not something we’d ever have done before, people don’t like transferring, we know that,” Jeff said, acknowledging the hard truth that the industry is slowly coming to terms with, that things need to change, and that some hard decisions need to be made. “But the network wouldn’t have survived at all if we hadn’t done that.

“We’ve tried to deliver a good level of service to the vast majority of users. Driver shortages and engineering issues come and go. Driver shortages are continuing to have a massive impact on us. When you go from having customers saying ‘I’ll pay your £4.80 as you turn up on time and your drivers are lovely’ and they’re now saying ‘the bus doesn’t turn up and the driver was a bit down today,’ it’s not good and it hurts.

“We’re a customer-led business. I empathise with how difficult it is out there for our service delivery team; our service delivery leaves a lot to be desired at the present time. We know where we need to be and how we’re going to get there, but it’s not a two-minute job.”

“Our engineering function is also showing the strain,” Jeff explained, the company having had a couple of years during which it paused vehicle investment. “We work our vehicles very hard,” he continued, “and we’re seeing some component failures we wouldn’t otherwise be seeing; engines and gearboxes. Thankfully, the board has agreed to investment in 20 new vehicles for this year despite finances still being uncertain. The business case for previous levels of vehicle investment just isn’t there at the minute. But one thing’s for sure: we can’t keep letting customers down. The more we dent confidence, the harder it will be to get them back.”

Our interview with Jeff continues in next week’s issue.

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