Strong demand for its temporary drivers and other logistics staff across its network saw Driver Hire’s turnover for the week climb to £2 million, replacing the company’s previous best weekly figure of £1.95 million, achieved in the run-up to Christmas 2013.

“We’ve made history this week, a truly fantastic achievement,” said Chris Chidley, Driver Hire’s Chief Executive Officer. “Our success is being driven by a number of factors. There’s increasing confidence in the economy generally. As the vast majority of goods travel by road, whether it’s industrial or retail, there’s clearly increasing demand for drivers. And of course, the fact that we’re at the peak of the holiday season makes it easy to see why there is such massive demand for our services.”

As well as success in its core business, Driver Hire’s other businesses are also creating records. Driver Hire Training is benefiting from the September deadline for Driver CPC training, which affects goods vehicle drivers who acquired their licence pre-2009. As a result the majority of trainers at Driver Hire offices are at exceptionally busy, ensuring that drivers complete the required 35 hours of vocational training. During July the network trained over 5,700 drivers and early indications are that August will be even busier.

The company’s eservices online offering is also adding significant levels of income. In particular, its most recently launched service, dh Licence Check, an online driving licence checking system, is proving to be extremely popular with customers. In less than six months since its launch, dh Licence Check is producing a revenue run rate of £300,000. Driver Hire is predicting that this will have increased to £500,000 by the financial year-end.

Driver Hire’s record week comes off the back of a flying start to the new financial year for the company.

Chidley continued: “Our strong performance is based on much more than seasonal factors. Our brand has a great reputation both within the road transport industry and franchising. These are exciting times for our franchisees, who are achieving record levels of profitability. Even before our record week we were 25 per cent up on the same time last year. A quarter of the network has achieved turnover that is up by 50 per cent or more; just short of a third of offices are up by 25 per cent or more. All of which explains why, during July we had over 100 enquiries from investors looking to buy into our highly successful business model.”

Published: 11 August 2014

Back to news