Talkin' Trucks With Mike:A History of the TNT Companies

Rene I was just looking for you actually I was talking about TNT Just In Time over on another thread I started and I saw your pictures over on the barclou website (or however it's spelled) and I was talking about Olex and Taxi Truck.

 

Guys check this video out:

 

This is a pretty cool video best video I have seen on British Contract Hire Trucking:

 

So I was watching that promotional video by British Road Service from 1987 over and over again, because I really like it. British Road Service is now defunct you Great Britten used to own a lot of the infrastructure industries. Like for a long long time the railroad in Britten was nationalized they actually didn't privatize the railroads until like the middle 1990s and I think that was the last thing to be nationalized like the railroad, phone, bus, a lot of stuff was just state owned industry, British road service was nationalized at one point in time that's how it really got it's start.

I know over the years TNT was really big in Europe especially in the 1980s and 1990s, but Great Britten and Ireland were always kind of this different animal. I'm sure and I know for a fact TNT had to have been in Britten somewhat, however I think Britten was always it's own animal compared to the rest of Europe and there trucking company I think Eddie Stobart LTD is the big British trucking company now a days he's like they're Schneider National, but back in the day British Road Service was the big road transport outfit, they still are in Great Britten.


Anyhow BRS, offered normal truck and freight haulage as well as other services like dedicated contract services. Kind of like what Schneider, Werner and JB Hunt do with some people who have, marked equipment and all that stuff. Well BRS is the same thing, and was doing it in the 1980s for places like Mothercare which you saw in the video above.

Mothercare (I think they are pretty much gone now as a brick and mortar retailer) was a baby and children retailer in the UK and in the 1980s Mothercare company wanted to change the distribution system. They were building a new warehouse in the southern corner of Great Britten and wanted more modern distribution for the stores.

The task at hand was move products from suppliers to the main distribution warehouse where the supply was assembled into orders and then reloaded onto trucks and shipped out to the stores.

British Road Service won the contract, they provided all marked equipment and had the largest out base network and basically they ran drawbar trailers at night which is like they're version of doubles to the out bases (i.e. drop yards) they call it a wagon and drag it's kind of like our west coast truck and trailer set up that you see only the cargo box comes fully off the trailer and slides onto the chassis of the truck and they make the deliveries in the city as single unit vehicles. Kind of a cool idea.

Where I work we do something similar we use 28' trailers and run doubles at night time from the out bases to the main warehouse base and back to the out base again. Then we just un hook our set of doubles and each day driver hooks to a single trailer and away they go. I like what they do though with the straight trucks and drawbars in the UK I think that's kind of a cool thing. I'll have more later.

 

TNT Newsfast with the strike in Wapping and all that stuff.

That all makes sense. I know by the late 1980s BRS was kind nearing the end of it's life cycle.


@R. Buron did TNT own any railroads or part of any railroads? I know you said they designed there own gantry cranes and containers and stuff in Australia. I know freight rail in continental Europe is not really comparable to the US or Australia. I know British Rails was it's own thing, but from what I've ever heard Australia and the US are like #1 for freight rail, I don't know of TNT to have done much with owning any major railroads here in the US. Australia is a different story, I'm sure they had arrangements, but it seems truck, air and marine was where they were most invested. I know they did ship containers by rail in Australia, but I know like here the US passenger rail isn't really a thing and in continental Europe freight rail obviously it exists, but it's not comparable to the US and Australian. Most US freight railroad execs say the only real comparable freight rail system to US freight rail is in Australia. Which kind of like trucking obviously Australia runs a lot of B-Train doubles and here in the US we run more A-train doubles, (I like the B-Trains my self I think they are a better more stable set up.) but besides that Australia the trucks they run are more American looking and Americanish then in like Europe and it stands to reason that the freight rail that they run is also more Americanish. Well like you said Australia and Canada have some major similarities in size and scope in some ways.

 

I consulted the TNT bible:
I should have done my homework better lol.

 

@R. Buron I've been doing some reading in your book and looking on the internet a little bit, but TNT (under Australian ownership) because that's the era of TNT I am interested in, only mentions in passing about TNT Waste Control. Which was like the garbage truck division of the company, I know they were only in Australia and what did TNT Waste Control do? Did they pick up and dispose of biohazard waste from hospitals? Did they collect regular municipal garbage? Even TNT's corporate promotional films the one's I could find really don't mention TNT Waste Control very much and I've only been able to see one small fleeting second in a company film of one of TNT Waste Controls garbage trucks. I know in the early 1990s TNT sold off the Waste Control division because around the early 1990s the company was big and vast and far and wide and had some many other companies and sub companies and affiliates and sub divisions they were really like General Electric in a lot of ways just had there hands in everything, but some of it was just to much and to far away from the core business and the Waste Control was to far from the core and they sold that unit off and then shortly after started restructuring and basically set up the structure which formed TNT Freightways which was basically the sell off of TNT's LTL companies in North America because in 1997 TNT's license expired and TNT Freightways dropped the TNT name and became US Freightways which was around for what 10 years maybe before they were bought out by Yellow Roadway Corp, but in that 10 years Reddeway and Holland were the only survivors Redstar parishes in the early 2000s and the rest of the TNT/USF Collection all got merged or put under and basically it was Reddeway in the west and Holland in the east and now that's pretty much done as Holland is now Yellow and that whole thing makes very little sense, but whatever. What's funny is the remnants from TNT company last 25 years after the company sold off.