'We went from delivering small parcels in Dublin to moving Ferraris across the US'

AT JUST 12 years old, Mark English was rubbing shoulders with the minister for justice. Well, rubbing shoulders with his security team might be more accurate.

The Dubliner had a part-time job delivering milk around Dundrum before he went to school, and one of his customers was the newly appointed justice minister, Michael Noonan.

“I only ever met Noonan’s bodyguards, and I think they used to get a kick out of frightening me,” English tells Fora.

“They would step out from behind the hedge at 5am on a dark winter’s morning and frighten the life out of me. I think they got some fun out of it.”

The money that English earned being scared by state-appointed bodyguards was put to good use, spent on football collector’s cards and Bruce Springsteen records.

The 46-year-old worked doing deliveries for local hardware store Mulvey’s during his late teens and applied to local courier companies after completing his leaving cert in the late 1980s.

The move made sense. Transport is what he does.

“Delivery has been in my blood since I was a kid,” he says.

Getting his wheels

The firm he eventually landed a job with in 1993, Wheels Couriers, was a small local operation that had just been established.

The firm specialised in the same-day delivery of documents and parcels in Dublin. English was a sales rep for the firm, responsible for securing new customers.

“I spent the early 90s building up the business by acquiring corporate clients in the advertising and financial sectors,” he says. “It was lots of motorcycles delivering print proofs in the pre-digital era.”

Wheels was acquired by JMC Van Trans, one of Dublin’s largest van companies, the same year that English was hired.

Mark English

As part of the larger group, Wheels Couriers grew from a small firm turning over just IR£200,000 to one with revenues of more than IR£4 million.

It was around this time that some larger rivals started sniffing around, and in 2000 An Post paid more than IR£11 million for JMC Van Trans and Wheels Couriers.

English spent more than eight years working with the state postal company, where Wheels Couriers was an operationally independent subsidiary, and both parties were largely happy.

Sold

However, when the recession rolled around in 2008, An Post management decided that the semi-state needed to shed all of its non-core operations. Wheels Couriers was offloaded to another Irish firm, Central Logistics. Business proved tough.

“The timing couldn’t have been worse. When the recession came there was a race to the bottom in our industry and the rates dropped dramatically. They never recovered,” he says.

“We lost €1 million turnover, about 30% of our revenue, in the space of about 12 months.”

The company didn’t cut staff but salaries were reduced as the firm tightened its belt.

A Wheels courier in Dublin

By chance, the company stumbled onto a new revenue stream when it was asked to help a multinational firm move its headquarters from London to Dublin.

“We moved their furniture, their computers, all their furnishings and equipment and sorted out housing for their employees,” English says.

“The clients were happy with the move and they contacted me six months later when they were doing the same thing, moving from Sydney to Singapore.”

Comfort zone

This side of Wheels’ business grew, and over the next few years the company started taking more jobs moving goods from A to B for large US companies.

“It really grew throughout 2012 and 2013, we were moving Ferraris for high-net worth individuals from one side of the US to the other and moving sports cars around the US,” he says.

“(Moving outside my comfort zone) was the best thing that ever happened to me and the company.

“Most of our business had predominantly been in the Dublin area, maybe going as far as Naas, and here I was travelling all over the US and Asia. It was exciting.”

The firm re-branded as Wheels We Deliver to reflect the fact that it offered more than courier services.

The company now employs 23 people on a full-time basis in its Dublin head office and also has a crew of more than 90 contractors that man the company’s fleet of cars, vans and motorcycles.

Its courier services still make up the core of the company’s offering, accounting for more than half of its revenue, however the firm is putting a big push on its ‘global logistics’ offering.

One of the company's vans

This encompasses a range of services, such as helping companies to move offices or staff, as well as data centre logistics, an area that has been growing as more businesses look to set up these operations in Ireland.

The firm was recently recognised as the country’s best courier company at the Irish Transport Awards and made a small profit of about €35,000 in the year to the end of 2015, according to its most recent accounts.

English said that profits are on course to grow this year, although he didn’t give exact figures, and said that the firm is expecting to turn over more than €5 million in 2017 as it expands.

As well as its standard courier operations, the company has also bought several different types of vehicles to cater for other customers.

“18 months ago we started a temperature controlled fleet to service clients (delivering) food, like Keelings Fruits or Begley’s Fruit and Veg,” English says. “We also have a specialised division for pharma which transports clinical samples for the medical sector.”

Move abroad

The bulk of the company’s turnover still comes from financial firms based in Ireland, although English adds: “We work with all of the major utility companies, healthcare companies, the HSE, we have a broad spectrum of clients.”

Internationally, the company does most of its business in the US, although it has also had dealings with several Asian organisations.

Large courier companies such as Cyclone and Pony Express provide Wheels with its main competition now that a lot of the low-cost rivals that sprung up during the recession have disappeared.

“A lot of the fly-by-night courier companies that got involved in the race to the bottom are gone, they couldn’t survive,” he says.

“We’ve invested heavily in technology and our brand and are able to compete on price.”

The company is now going to continue its focus on spreading its wings internationally, with English saying that it will likely open an office in the US next year.

“The states is where most of our clients are based out of, and I think it will be a natural progression that we will open somewhere on the east coast. In early 2018 we will look at that,” he says.

“The aim is to retain all our existing domestic business in Ireland and grow our global services business and medical and temperature controlled divisions, that’s where we’ve seen the growth.”

Come next 2018, English will have been with Wheels We Deliver for 25 years. After giving a huge chunk of his life in service to the company, he says he has no intention of leaving.

“25 years is a long time, but I am very happy. For a small Irish company to be managing massive office relocations in Manhattan or Singapore is a huge achievement that I’m very proud of.”

A company man then? “Absolutely. Through and through.”

This article is part of our weekly series examining the nuts and bolts of businesses. If you would like to see your company featured please email news@fora.ie.