Avantee Logistics

How can you grow your business, while remaining faithful to your roots? It’s a question that Kevin Evans, the owner of Avantee Logistics, thought about for a long time, until he found the solution by signing up to Courier Exchange, one of the UK’s leading collaborative logistics platforms. Kevin founded Avantee Logistics, a same day courier service with headquarters in Tunbridge Wells and Reading, 5 years ago.

“We worked hard to build up a large and profitable customer base in Kent and Berkshire. Many of our clients are large logistics companies or manufacturers that are locally based, but operate throughout the whole of the UK and Europe. Like any ambitious logistics company, we wanted to forge closer links with them, but with a small fleet we realised that on our own, we didn’t have the agility or scale to provide national delivery capability to them at such short notice – unless we could find a recognised freight partner organisation to help.”

A game changer

Evans, who has worked in the same day courier sector for thirty five years, believed that the solution lay in collaborative logistics. It was then that he turned to CX.

He explains, “I had known about CX for a long time and decided to join. The technology is fairly intuitive, and it began to make a real difference to the business after just four months. Looking back, signing up to CX is probably one of the best decisions that we’ve ever made. Why? Because CX’s virtual fleet allows us to utilise the vast skillset of around 43,000 skilled drivers, meaning that we can take on jobs anywhere in the UK, and usually have them covered in around 60 minutes.”

Increased revenue stream

With Avantee Logistics primarily using CX to post loads, in percentage terms, how much does Evans think CX has added to the company’s annual revenue?

“99 percent of the time we use CX’s Live Availability Map (LAM) system to check the status of drivers in our network, and to post loads. We estimate that we earn between 15,000 to 20,000 pounds each month subcontracting work through the Exchange to its compliant freelance pool of drivers. And we would say the work we subcontract via the platform adds around 70 percent to our annual turnover.

Signing up to CX is probably one of the best decisions that we have ever made… the platform adds around 70 percent to our annual turnover.

Winning new clients

Has access to the CX virtual fleet also helped Avantee win new business?

“While I cannot say that CX is solely responsible for winning us new customers, it’s certainly played a part in winning new contracts. It’s made our business pitches to prospective clients much more compelling, because we’re able to tell them that we’re able to tap into a compliant virtual and mixed fleet at any time. That, I think, has added an extra dimension to our service offering.”

A communication enhancer

Kevin, who believes that “regular and pro-active communication between operator and customer” is the cornerstone of any successful logistics business, is convinced that the pioneering new technology developed by CX can play a key role in ensuring the client receives regular updates.

He says, “CX, has made this much easier for both us and the drivers that we subcontract. Why? Because if the driver activates the ‘on my way to pick up’ button, it means that the driver, the despatch manager at Avantee and the customer can all track the vehicle’s real-time position on the LAM. This means that nobody has to waste their time phoning the driver to find out where he is, which improves communication and efficiency.”