2006 – A Record year for Fruehauf

When Duncan Wordsworth relaunched the company in 2005, he announced that Fruehauf would sell 500 tippers in 2006, its first full year of trading. A bold statement given that Crane Fruehauf, the UK’s leading tipper manufacturer for many years, had never sold more than 360 tippers in any year!

However, with a buoyant order book of nearly 100 units, a strong distributor network, and an experienced direct salesforce, a rejuvenated Fruehauf team set about the task with gusto.

The year started well thanks to several large orders of more than 10 trailers, lots of small operators returning to the fold, and the recruitment of Granco, Fruehauf’s first independent distributor in Ireland. The first quarter saw orders of over 180 tippers, the highest 3 month total in the history of Crane Fruehauf.

The company therefore went to the CV Show at the NEC showing its latest Smoothsider, traditional bathtub, and a prototype bathtub rigid body on a DAF 8 wheeler, in buoyant mood. Although quietly confident,  the team were totally unprepared for the tremendously positive reception from old customers and new alike. By the close of the Show, they had taken orders for an unprecedented 47 tippers, another record. At the same time the reaction to the bathtub rigid body was so positive that the decision was made to press ahead with plans to develop a rigid body production facility at Grantham.

And so, despite a dip in the tipper market in the last quarter of the year, the 500 tipper target was reached with weeks to spare. Towards the end of the year, the production facility was flat out producing 20 tippers a week.

So what are the prospects for 2007? Well that record 3 month order intake at the start of 2006 has already been beaten. In the first quarter of 2007 order intake exceeded 200 tippers and Stuart Ritchie confidently expects to exceed Duncan’s latest challenge of selling over 700 in this new year, and that excludes the new rigid bodies! Who would bet against it?