Business that started with horse and cart

GARY Dawson remembers 1998 well. It was the year in which his family's logistics firm were to take their operations to a new level with the purchase of the Linthorpe Dinsdale site on the banks of the River Tees in Middlesbrough.

The move would link together 1,000 metres of prime quayside and offer up a serious amount of set-down space for taking goods from ships moored at the quayside.

Now renamed the North Sea Supply Base, it brought with it the 210ft high fabrication halls that were prized by the offshore industry. It was a shrewd move, for all the analysts watching that particular market were predicting a five-year boom and AV Dawson would be in a prime position to cash in.

"The opposite happened and the price of oil dropped through the floor," says Gary, with a smile. "The customers we were expecting didn't materialise."

The mark of a good business is its ability to roll with the punches but in boxing parlance this was a low blow. Undeterred, the company set about finding the silver lining in a dark cloud.

Gary explains: "We switched our focus and now marketed the fabrication centre for decommissioning as everyone was now predicting the decline of North Sea oil production. We got so far down the line with various partners, and in the meantime used the fabrication halls for storage of our traditional wharf cargos such as steel and fertiliser products. Ultimately, four years later, world events conspired to force oil prices up again making oil exploration and resultant fabrication the primary market for this facility."

Now, the North Sea Supply Base fabrication halls - a feature of the Middlesbrough skyline - are booming, and with it one of the town's long-serving businesses.

The company started life in 1938 when Arthur Vernon Dawson - or Vernie as he was known to everyone - sold his prized motor car to buy a horse called Dina and a cart to haul coal.

Nearly 70 years on and the company which started with the £50 Vernie made on his car has now evolved into a multi-million-pound international logistics business capable of moving cargo of all kinds by road, rail and sea.

The business diversified from its haulage routes into property, rail and port operations under the stewardship of the now company chairman Maurice Dawson, Vernie's son. It is now a third generation family business and the latest Dawson to take the reins is putting his mark on the company.

Were health and safety laws as strict in the late Seventies as they are now, then Gary Dawson's passion for his grandfather's company would not have begun at such a young age.

Little more than seven or eight, he had a brush in his hand sweeping the floors of the Middlesbrough haulage business AV Dawson until he was old enough to progress to bigger and better tasks.

"I used to spend my summer holidays working down here, literally doing everything the lads do now," he recalls. "I perhaps shouldn't have done it, but back then health and safety wasn't what it is now. I did everything from sweeping up to forklift truck work. I've worked here as long as I can remember and I was always doing something in the holiday periods to earn a bit of pocket money."

Gary left school at 16, went to South Park Sixth Form college and then on to Loughborough University to study business and German joint degree which included a year working in Germany at the Mars Group's base in Bremen. It was inevitable though that he would follow in his father Maurice's footsteps and take over the role of running the business.

If you trace the business's history, you find each successive generation has put its own mark on the company and helped it to grow.

Gary's stamp has been to restructure the business, put in place a senior management team with the authority and budget to make decisions and recruit as well as building synergy in to everything that AV Dawson does.

He's also always on the lookout for opportunities. The North Sea Supply Base, has played a major role in this. Gary says: "It is iconic in the offshore industry. It put us on the map in terms of the people we were dealing with and the companies we could attract.

"It has helped us to work with fabricators and designers for the BPs and the Chevrons of the world that were a different market all together. We saw the potential when we bought it to target these companies."

And, it is not solely traditional offshore work the company is courting. It is showing considerable attention to the renewable energy industry and sees opportunities in moving biomass, biodiesel and bio-ethanol. In recent weeks, it has been courted by a company looking to fabricate wind turbines and, independently, another that makes the cables which link to offshore wind farms.

The coal business that Vernie started in 1938 had quickly morphed into a year-round haulage business after the Second World War.

In 1973, Dawsons snapped up Middlesbrough Wharf - later renamed Dawsons Wharf - but it wasn't until 1989 that it could make full use of the acquisition.

It took 12 years for the company to acquire a licence to operate the wharf, and even then it was limited to loading bulk. It took a further four years and the might of Maggie Thatcher for it to fully realise its potential.

Gary explains: "Margaret Thatcher dismantled the National Dock Labour Scheme, which was a very restrictive working practice. When it was gone, you could operate a quayside with your own men.

"Previously, if you could get a licence, which was hard to do in itself, you had to get labour from the National Labour Pool. Basically, it meant that if you wanted to two men for a job, you had to employ eight - two to actually do the work and six to oversee them," he joked.

In 1985, the company acquired the Ayrton Rolling Mill, which allowed it to create its own rail freight terminal and completed the logistics picture that today gives the company a real competitive edge.

Gary says: "There are lots of people out there doing lots of elements we do, but not one who can integrate all of these disciplines with the same 'can do' attitude and willingness that we have at AV Dawson."

The 'can do' attitude is clearly an important one for a company, which has an ethos of never saying no to a customer, preferring instead to find solutions to problems that may occur. Such a mindset has seen it become involved in the movement and storage of products as diverse as chemicals, steel and retail goods.

It has also enabled the company to spread the risk. "We have broadened our customer base and expertise to more sectors," explains Gary.

The diversity has also brought with it synergy that has helped all quarters of the business.

Gary recalls that when he joined the company full time in 1991 there was an ageing workforce, but the business was already moving away from its traditional road haulage background.

"When I joined the company, the haulage side of the business was pretty run down and had been struggling for years," he says. "Our sites weren't integrated and our customer base was limited. We have now increased the quality and quantity of the people we work for. In turn, we have generated business through the rail head and quayside for the haulage fleet. This means we are not fully reliant on external sites to produce tonnage."

Gary was appointed managing director in 2000, his father moving upstairs to become chairman.

It was in 2002 that Gary swung his full plans into action and created the senior management team.

Working with a company called Hallmarks, he made sure every member of the team went on a leadership programme.

He recalls: "It worked, it really worked. It got everybody working together and communicating properly. The benefits that brought to the business were staggering - the whole 'can do' attitude and company culture we developed."

The impact has been significant with turnover trebling in the past six years.

Furthermore, employment has more than doubled in past decade with the company now responsible for 130 permanent staff and a further 60 contractors on a daily basis.

Gary says: "We are not a local haulier anymore, we are an international logistics firm."

AV Dawson is once again on the lookout for further land acquisition after running out of space to develop any more warehousing or infrastructure on its existing site. It is currently in negotiations to buy an additional 12 acres to add to its 60.

"AV Dawson has progressed significantly. We are now able to spend more money on exploring new markets and trying different things outside of our comfort zone," says Gary. "A major selling point is that we remain a family business. That does give us certain advantages. The people running business own the business and care passionately about it.

"We have such versatility here, we have a 'can do' attitude and never say no. We always find a solution. It is the ability to adapt to customers requirements that sets us apart."

It does have threats to its business that it is taking steps to deal with.

The highest on the list is the continued decline of UK manufacturing.

Gary says: "We realise that we need to look for opportunities in new supply chains perhaps closer to retail. That inevitably means more container handling because so much is moved around in containers, but we are looking at ways to add value.

"We have taken a long-term view to grow the business. Hopefully, it will remain a family business there for the next generation. We want to continue serving the customers we have and operate in as many niche markets in a wide variety of different industries. I still see us being involved in the movement of freight, management of freight supply chains, but potentially working for new markets and new customers.

"At the end of the day we still quite like seeing ships coming up the river, running our own locomotives and having a transport fleet."

Driving ambition of company that continues to flourish

KEY to AV Dawson's success has been its ability to find synergy between the different divisions of the company, no more so than in creation and growth of two new sections of the business.

AV Dawson launched Tees Valley Trailers in December 2005 to complement the growing success of its road haulage operations. The company went from a standing start to trading 400 trailers in its first year of operation. It now has a trailer hire fleet in excess of 200 trailers and a turnover of 1m.

That success is expected to escalate after Tees Valley Trailers became stockists of Dennison Trailers and won the contract to be agents for major brand names M&G trailers and Boalloy trailer bodies.

AV Dawson also created Tees Valley Coatings in January of this year. The company offers specialist commercial and industrial coatings and operates the largest spray and shot-blast facility in the North East.

Tees Valley Coatings works not only for the haulage business but also on heavy industrial plant such as cranes and mechanical loading shovels as well as structural steel work for the many fabricators working on the AV Dawson site.

Gary Dawson, managing director of AV Dawson, said: "Tees Valley Coatings started because we couldn't find anywhere to get things painted. It now has a amount of third party business, works with contractors on the site, as well as serving Tees Valley Trailers and AV Dawson. Work for third parties not related to the Dawson sites plays an important role in the success of Tees Valley Coatings and we are looking to grow this element"

"We are always looking for an opportunity to add value and create revenue from within. The synergies between these and AV Dawson haulage is incredible. There's a lot of inter-trading and generating business within the business."