Sailing through it

Not many heavy haulage operations can boast a 125-year company history and even fewer still can claim to remaining family-run after such a long time. But Williams Shipping, based in Millbrook, Southampton, is a surprisingly varied and resilient firm that knows just how to succeed in a competitive market. Part of its resilience comes from operating across four key sectors – marine services, logistics, container hire and sales, and marine lubricants distribution. 

It all began with the marine side in 1894, when 30-year old George Williams set up his own business, acquiring a pinnace (a small open boat used for rowing crews out to vessels) from the Royal Navy which he converted into a small sailing barge that could carry 20 tons of cargo. 

Today, the company’s marine services operation is rather more complex, centring around vessel charter (it has a fleet of more than 26 marine vessels and barges), crane hire and port services, and providing support for shipping lines, oil terminals, freight forwarders, ship’s agents, civil engineers and the energy sector. 

“The marine operation has been there from day one,” confirms Jonathan Williams, managing director of logistics at the company, son of current chairman Eric, and one of the fifth generation in the family to be involved in the company.

“Additionally, we were being called upon to distribute marine lubricants by road, initially to local ports such as Portsmouth, Poole and Portland, and then further afield to Falmouth in the west or across to the Thames in the east.

“Inevitably other general haulage opportunities arose,” adds Colin. “Then my brother Eric joined the company in the late 1960s, and he had a real interest in developing the transport side. We started working for a company in Fawley called Monsanto Chemicals, moving low-density polyethylene, a by-product of the refining process in those days. We built up a relationship with them and they started offering us work direct. We soon had a fleet of about 12 trucks, in their livery, distributing these low-density polyethylene granules all over the UK. And before long, we started working for other companies, too, and that was the backbone of our haulage business.”

The haulage business suffered a setback when Monsanto announced in 1982 that it was closing the Fawley plant and the truck operation was scaled right back. It wasn’t to stay this way for long, however.

“During the 1980s, we took a bullish view and started to go out looking for other customers, which we were successful in finding. Then, as the business grew, we started doing out-of-gauge, heavy and difficult loads,” says Colin. “We recognised back then that the general road transport business was incredibly tight on margins, but saw that the margins we could achieve by buying trailers that could carry out-of-gauge loads were much higher, so we didn’t follow the crowd.”
 
Setting up the logistics division, which these days covers general, heavy, national and international haulage, as well as project moves, specialist trailer hire and storage services, ultimately led to the creation of the containers operation, too, explains Colin. “In 1993, we got a call from a road transport customer asking where they could source some 20ft and 40ft containers. My brother Eric offered to find some for them, and the business grew from there,” he says. Today, operating under the name Willbox, this division has over 3,000 containers on hire as well as a healthy container sales operation.

Williams Shipping’s heavy haulage operation centres around marine-related loads, naturally, but has also extended to other areas and includes substantial work for the oil, gas, highway and energy sectors, among others. On the morning of our interview with the company, for example, it had been moving a 30m-long wind turbine blade on its way to the Isle of Wight. Other recent contracts include shifting two 38m-long ship-to-shore walkways from one berth to another at the Port of Southampton, and moving a newly constructed, 30m-long road footbridge from Southampton to Chichester. 

“A lot of the work we get is by referral from other transport companies who don’t have the expertise, the drivers or the equipment for this kind of work. Often, we work for other transport companies who have much larger fleets than ours but not the specialist equipment,” says Colin.