UPN welcomes back Richard Read (Transport) and adds R&P Clarke

Gloucestershire-based Richard Read (Transport) has quit Pall-Ex to re-join United Pallet Network (UPN).

In the same week UPN announced the arrival of Basildon-based R&P Clarke, which will continue to deliver for pallet network Fortec, too.

Richard Read (Transport) will cover the Hereford and Gloucester postcodes, whilst R&P Clarke will cover postcodes across Essex and the south-east of England.

Speaking to MT, Richard Read, MD, said he was “very happy” to be back at UPN, which the firm quit in 2015.

Read more

• A Davies Transport returns to Pall-Ex
• Pallet networks in bloom after UK’s record breaking weather
• Palletforce moves record number of pallets and achieves new turnover high

Read cited UPN’s IT system, the network’s reliability and flexibility and its management’s “willingness to listen to its members” as reasons for the firm’s return.

He said that since joining UPN the firm had won back customers, gained new business and seen pallet number per night soar from below 100 to 250.

Read added: “I am extremely pleased that we are back working with familiar faces and a flexible reliable company for our nationwide pallet freight distribution.”

A spokesman for UPN said R&P Clarke, which also owns contract haulage company RC Haulage, will dual run for UPN and Fortec.

“We are happy for R&P Clarke to dual run. As everyone knows there is a shortage of good haulage companies in the south east region,” he said, adding: “There is increasing momentum right across the networks for dual running. UPN is very comfortable with that strategy.”

Co-owner Paul Clarke said: “We knew when choosing UPN over several other networks that we were joining a quality driven network which would quite quickly become integral to our business moving forward”.