‘Pioneering’ transporter runs 120-vehicle fleet

Kevin Mayhew TRANSPORT CONTRACTORS Freight and Passenger Services in Lusaka – one of the pioneering transport companies in Zambia in 1957 – is to move to new premises in the third quarter of this year. Managing director, Ebrahim Mulla, tells with some understandable pride that the company’s licence to operate was given to his late father in 1957 and was the second such licence granted in the country which was then still under British control. The recipient of the first licence has long since disappeared but the second generation family business he and his two brothers Mussa and Mohamed today run has a fleet of 120 vehicles for its freight activities. “We have moved with the times and expanded as necessary and now we believe it is time to move to new premises which will give us many more facilities,” Ebrahim says. Exactly where he is not telling, yet. The company operates in all Sadec countries and is moving into Tanzania. It handles general cargo, containerised breakbulk and even fuel from Mozambique through Beira and on to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). “The demands are there at the moment and we see it as the right time to expand. We have stuck to our principle of expanding only when we see a definite need to,” he concludes.