Anyone familiar with the dark arts of O-licence law and the traffic commissioners will be familiar with the Priority Freight question.
In 2009 Judge Brodrick of the Upper Tribunal overturned a TC's decision to revoke the haulier’s O-licence by, in part, posing what is now commonly referred to as the Priority Freight question: “How likely is it that this operator will, in future, operate in compliance with the operator’s licensing regime?” The answer was that the company was likely to be compliant and should be allowed to retain its O-licence – and the TCs have posed this question in their judgements ever since.
The Dover-based company may well be forever associated with this legal landmark, but it has been on a phenomenal growth curve in recent years. According to recent documents filed at Companies House the freight forwarder, haulier and truck park operator achieved a turnover of £41.4m for the 15 months ending 31 December 2014 (it restructured its financial year to synchronise all group companies) compared to £12.9m in the year-ending 30 September 2013. It’s profitable too, achieving a pre-tax profit of £1.4m in the 15 month period, compared to £73,250 in the previous financial year.
How has this been achieved? The company says it has been particularly successful in business development of international markets with export sales (£24.7m) overtaking domestic sales (£16.7m) for the first time in 2014. In fact, in 2013 export sales stood at just £2.6m. It also cites its “unique cloud-based IT” which provides “timely and transparent information to our clients”. Want more? It’s also got £2.5m of net assets on the books, a 77% increase year-on-year.
Whatever Priority Freight is doing, the balance sheet says it is working. While the Priority Freight question continues to be a pertinent one to ask, perhaps there should be a new Priority Freight question: why is Priority Freight doing so well?