The road to success.

Pete Osborne started his own transport business in 1990, when he bought his first vehicle. Sheer hard work and determination were required to get the business up and running and to establish a reputation for quality customer service, which is still the company's watchword today. By the mid nineties, the fleet consisted of seven trucks and Pete realised that the next logical way to expand the business was to provide warehousing services to a selection of large customers. He, therefore, acquired his first 7000 square foot storage facility and Pete Osborne Logistics was formed.

The last four years have seen an impressive period of growth for the company, this has been generated from a solid foundation of blue chip clients. The company's turnover has increased by fifty per cent year on year. Due to this continued expansion, Pete needed to find larger premises and relocated the company to it's new head offices and 350,000 square foot National Distribution Centre at Darton, South Yorkshire. By retaining it's other depots, at Wombwell and Finningley, Pete Osborne Logistics now has an impressive warehousing capacity of over one million square feet. The company prides itself on the impressive fleet of vehicles, travelling the length and breadth of the UK, sporting the distinctive green, red and white livery of Pete Osborne Logistics. A significant increase in the size of the fleet is planned by April 2001.

The new national distribution centre comprises two storage bays and a loading bay with facilities for ten trucks. When Pete decided to install pallet racking in the second storage bay, he asked Redirack to provide a quotation. As Pete explains "Although Redirack did not get the order for the racking in the first bay, their local representative kept in contact with me and so I invited them to take a look at the project." He continues "From the outset, I was impressed with Redirack's approach. They provided excellent drawings and a very flexible solution and were prepared to accommodate our amendments to the layout, no matter how trivial, without complaint. The Redirack quotation was competitive and the fact that they are a local company is a bonus."

The Redirack solution increased the storage capacity in the second bay by 60%.The system finally selected provides a block of wide aisle racking consisting of seven double and two single runs. Each run has twenty eight double bays, with eight beam levels in the centre of the building. To make best use of the building's internal height, each of the six centre runs has eight beam levels, with a top beam height of thirteen metres. All the other runs have six beam levels. Throughout the system, pallets in the bottom locations sit on the floor. Previously 6,000 pallets were block stacked on the floor. The new layout now gives 9,700 pallet positions and has created a far more efficient operating environment. The installation had to be phased to allow the warehouse to continue to operate throughout, with a minimum amount of disruption.

Confirming his satisfaction with the service provided by Redirack, Pete says "In terms of the robustness of the product and it's overall quality, Redirack is far superior to our previous supplier, In fact I have asked them to replace the safety barriers in our other bay."

Pete Osborne Logistics is a business, which is continuing to expand. To cope with this Pete has earmarked some land on the Darton site to provide a further 300,000 square feet of warehouse space and he concludes,"Redirack will be asked to supply the racking system, when this expansion becomes necessary."