Chris Chidley, CEO

Franchisees at Driver Hire are celebrating. Thanks to their combined efforts we’ve just had our best ever trading week in our thirty year history. Strong demand for our temporary drivers and other logistics staff right across our nationwide network saw the company’s turnover for the week climb to £2m. The previous best – which was set during hectic trading in the run-up to Christmas 2013 – was £1.95m.

“We’ve made history this week – a fantastic achievement,” says Chris Chidley, Driver Hire’s Chief Executive Officer. “Our success is being driven by a number of factors. There’s increasing confidence in the economy generally. As the vast majority of goods travel by road, whether it’s industrial or retail, there’s clearly increasing demand for drivers. And of course, the fact that we’re at the peak of the holiday season makes it easy to see why there is such massive demand for our services.”

As well as success in our core business, Driver Hire’s other businesses are also creating records – and adding further income for franchisees. Driver Hire Training is benefiting from the September deadline for Driver CPC training which affects goods vehicle drivers who acquired their licence pre-2009. As a result the majority of trainers at Driver Hire offices are exceptionally busy, ensuring that drivers – both customers and their own – complete the required 35 hours of vocational training. During July the network trained over 5,700 drivers and early indications are that August will be even busier.

Our eServices online offering is also adding significant levels of income. In particular, our most recently launched service, dh Licence Check, an online driving licence checking system, is proving to be extremely popular with customers. In less than six months since its launch, dh Licence Check is producing a revenue run rate of £300k. Driver Hire is predicting that this will have increased to £500k by the financial year-end.

Driver Hire’s record week comes off the back of a flying start to the new financial year for the company. “Our strong performance is based on much more than seasonal factors. Our brand has a great reputation both within the road transport industry and franchising. These are exciting times for our franchisees who are achieving record levels of profitability,” Chris continues. “Even before our record week we were 25% up on same time last year. A quarter of the network has achieved turnover that is up by 50% or more; just short of a third of offices are up by 25% or more. All of which explains why, during July we had over 100 enquiries from investors looking to buy into our highly successful business model.”

Great news for those considering Driver Hire as a UK based franchise opportunity.