Outsourcing specialist offers one-call service to c&f industry

Original capital outlay was R1000! Daya Moodley É simple formula is hard work, commitment to service and total integrity Regan Moodley É if it involves transportation and warehousing, we do it WHEN SHIPPING and General Transport managing director Daya Moodley started the company in 1984 as a one-man band, his capital outlay was R1000. Eighteen years down the line the company, which markets itself as a transport and warehousing arm for the clearing and forwarding industry, employs 120 staff, owns a fleet of 60 vehicles, and has national representation in Durban, Cape Town and East London. The formula, says Moodley, is simple Ð hard work, commitment to service and total integrity. Shipping & General was launched as a freight and transport consultancy, helping freight agents to sort out LCL and groupage problems that arose with SA Container Depots at the time. Moodley, who had been employed at SACD, saw a gap in the market and capitalised on it. One year later he saw the need for a transport arm and bought his first vehicle for R5 000, having started out by hiring two trucks at R150 a day to test the market. The vehicle was immediately put to work doing local deliveries for clearing and forwarding agents and moving overstays from SACD for Saftainer. It was a question of finding the right niche and building on it, says Moodley. Today the company offers a much wider outsourced package. "We have become a one-call service for the clearing and forwarding industry," says son and operations director Regan Moodley who joined the company in 1995. "We do collections, tracking, FCL and LCL transport, customs examination, unpacking and full-scale distribution, all on a national level." And itÕs particularly in the packing for exports that Shipping & General has carved a distinctive and specialist niche for itself, developing a reputation in the highly sensitive cargo field. It has a Hazchem licence and is in the process of acquiring a bond removal code which will enable it to transport goods in bond. As the logistics industry increasing moves toward outsourcing its non-core business, so Shipping & General has widened its scope. "Basically if it involves transportation and warehousing, we do it," says Regan.