No wait for this freight
November 30, 2009With almost 40 years' experience in the field of freight and logistics, Owen Cooke could have sat back and enjoyed the fruits of his labours. Such a course of action, however, would have been profoundly out of character. Having forked out an eight-figure sum to establish The Pallet Network in 2004, it's fair to say he gambled his entire career on the new company's success. Fast forward five years, and the venture was worked out well for all involved. So much so, indeed, that 2009 saw Cooke shortlisted for the prestigious Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award, while the company has ambitious plans to deliver its brand of pallet network to the European stage.
To understand the collective as it now stands, it's perhaps best to study its origins. Cooke, a native of the north Meath enclave of Moylagh, was a promising footballer for the club before his career was cut short in the 1970s. That the injury came about as a result of a hang-gliding accident at the age of 21 says something about his make-up mentality. "Four of us brought the first four hang-gliders into the country," he recalls. "It was a very crude and dangerous machine and it was a hairy thing to fly."
Whether in leisure pursuits or business, it seems, calculated risk has always been a part of his essence.
Cooke's football career may have ended almost before it began, but taking a back seat wasn't an option. "You're always looking for a new challenge," he says. "I had a lot of interests, from flying monoplanes, motorsports, sailing and water-skiing."
That get-up-and-go attitude has surely helped in the world of business. Having worked in the transport industry since 1970 heading up Unilever's transport businesses, he experienced the way things were and had a vision for a new, improved future. "At the time," he says, "CIE had a monopoly on commercial transport. It might take you five, six days or more to get a pallet delivered from one end of the country to the other."
The state-run monopoly was dismantled after the country joined the EEC in the mid-70s but even by 1980, there was no proper development of the commercial transport industry in Ireland. Nevertheless, the sector was growing, so Cooke formed Independent Express Cargo in 1984. "It was always my dream, even going back to the 70s, to put together a proper nationwide system for palletised cargo, but it was a struggle in the early days to provide clients with a good nationwide delivery system. You'd get someone to take a pallet to and from Dublin alright, but say you wanted to send something from Sligo to Kilkenny? No chance."
The situation improved steadily over the following 20 years or so but Cooke still spotted a glaring niche in the market. The decision was taken to put together a team of hauliers across the entire country, and a new purpose-built facility was put together at NorthWest Business Park in Blanchardstown. The gamble was calculated, but it was a gamble nonetheless. "The biggest risk," he says, "was that the transport market might not be ready for it, and to get competing hauliers to work together to create a nationwide network and to trust each other was always going to be a huge task. Joining The Pallet Network was a radical change for a lot of regional carriers - they were required to be very professional and operate in a tightly controlled and monitored environment."
Having held talks with 75 companies, The Pallet Network started life with 10 carriers from around the country. The collective started with 150 pallets on the first night of operations and from there, progress has been swift. The initial network of 10 members has grown to 23, covering every corner of Ireland, and the company now sees approximately 1500 pallets a night pass through its Blanchardstown hub. And it is eminently capable of more - the impressive facility has capacity for around 5000 pallets in each 24-hour period, so there is ample room for expansion in the future.
"It's been a rip-roaring success," says Cooke, who now serves as Chairman of the collective. "It was a huge investment at the start - we spent about €15m building the sortation facility and sustained a further €2m in trading losses to develop the system. But overall, everything has worked out very well. I think we got the timing just about right - if we'd left it for a few years someone else might have been able to position themselves where we are now."
So how has the economic downturn affected The Pallet Network on a day-to-day basis? "There's no doubt that the economy has been in bad shape in recent months," admits Cooke. "Some of our customers might be down in volume by 30, 40, 50 per cent, but on the flip side of that we're still gaining new customers. A lot of businesses have operated a dedicated sub-contracted fleet in the past and some of them are discovering that our overnight delivery service might represent much better value. The market won't improve greatly over the next couple of years at least but we've still grown despite that, so we're in a very strong position."
The success of The Pallet Network over the past five years saw Cooke nominated for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award earlier this year. Such recognition can only raise the company's profile and appeal, and Cooke was delighted with the nomination. "Ernst & Young are huge globally so it's a very prestigious award and it gave us plenty of good publicity," he says. "The main thing for me was that I got to spend a lot of time with the other finalists and many previous winners. You become part of a great network and it was very inspiring to spend time with those guys."
Not content with resting on his laurels, Cooke is always looking at the next possible venture - and he has put plans in place to export his business model to Poland and the Czech Republic in the coming months. "I've made several trips to Poland at this stage and we've held meetings with about 30 potential network members. A lot of very smart Polish people have worked with us in Ireland to make The Pallet Network what it is, they know how to run the operations and they're anxious to get back home so we're feeding into that.
"Poland is the fastest growing market in Europe and it's been very difficult for the small guy to compete with the multi-nationals but our model could give them the chance to do that. It will still be very difficult - a lot of the roads are poor and the distances are big, so there are lots of challenges to overcome, but we hope we can do it."
Exporting a business model into the fastest growing economy in Europe is a long road from the GAA fields of north Meath. Cooke's hang-gliding misadventures saw him miss out on Moylagh's Intermediate Football Championship success in 1975, but his brother Pa was a key player.
Now a farmer in Wicklow, having "emigrated" to the Garden County in the early 1980s, Pa also runs Hilltop Shooting Club in Newtownmountkennedy.
He admits that he remembers little about events on the field during the IFC final win over Dunshaughlin, only the sense of occasion which surrounded the game. "There was great excitement at the time," says Pa. "A few of us were working in Dublin and we were travelling up and down, carloads of us, twice a week for training. The roads weren't as good then either."
Pa has two sons, David and Dara, with David a key player on the An Tóchar senior team. He has been close to the Wicklow county side on occasion, although injuries perhaps prevented him from making the big breakthrough. "He broke one finger on each hand at one stage," says Pa. "One from football, and one from falling off a horse, but he eats and sleeps football."
Owen, for his part, still follows the fortunes of Meath on the field and he has faith in Eamonn O'Brien's ability to restore some glory to the county. "I still go to a lot of the county games and I'm very hopeful that Meath can get back to the top," he says. "Eamonn O'Brien is doing the right things - he seems to be bringing a bit of the Sean Boylan mentality back to the team. Getting to an All-Ireland semi-final isn't a bad year but I'd love to see us winning another Leinster Championship. Dublin have had their own way for too long."
For more information on The Pallet Network, visit www.tpn.ie. Tweet
