During International Women's Week, we interviewed our Transport Manager, Sarah Jones...

How long have you worked here?

I’ve worked at Robinsons for four and a half years now. I started as a Transport Supervisor and then progressed to Transport Manager. I’ve previously worked in Logistics for a large multinational company where I managed four depots around the UK. When I moved to Robinsons, I wanted to take a step back from some of the chaos and settle into a family business with a slightly more manageable pace. It’s still busy of course, but it’s a place where I feel more valued. I don’t feel like I’m just a number, which is great.

So, what does a typical day for you look like?

I start between 6am and 7am to see all the dray teams depart in a morning. I’ll be in the office to resolve any issues and ensure that the teams have all the equipment to carry out their jobs safely.

Then, once all the dray teams have left site for the day, I start to look ahead to the next day/coming weeks. I’ll monitor the system to ensure all orders are taken for deliveries for the next day, working closely with the customer services team. Once all the orders are received, it’s now a case of ensuring all customer orders will fit on the fleet we have. We have a variety of vehicles that carry different weights so it’s extremely important we plan accordingly and run compliantly.

To achieve this, I scan through all the orders on the delivery schedule, assessing the weight on each order and each delivery route. Then, if it’s over the legal limit a vehicle can carry, we need to look for a solution. Perhaps look if there is another vehicle in the same area who can assist to balance the loads out. We do everything we can to ensure everyone gets their delivery on the day they are scheduled.

Transport is a key element for this business. It’s ensuring anything with wheels (so that’s the horse box too!) is running compliantly. I’m responsible for making sure all the vehicles are legal to go out on the road, this involves ensuring they all have MOT’s and that they are serviced and taxed. Every morning the teams are required to complete a vehicle check sheet and any defects are reported and rectified before going out on the road.

Health and safety wise, we also risk assess our pubs every year. We inspect every pub on every route and make sure we can deliver with any changes that are made, for example a new beer garden or pub refurbishment. We’ve got to ensure that we can still get the beer into the delivery point. My role revolves heavily around clear communication from many different areas of the business. What changes in someone else’s world could impact the delivery of goods.

Ah ok, and I suppose that’s why sometimes delivery schedules can change?

Yes, predominantly we would only ever need to change a route due to busy festive periods and occasionally when we do get some sunshine in the UK! There are curve balls we contend with in transport like road closures and an odd snow day, but we do advise the customers with any changes as soon as we know. We try to avoid disruption to customers and one of the great things we have introduced is the use of time windows so the customer has a better understanding of what time they are getting the delivery, so they know if they need to nip out, they can.

What’s your favourite part of the job?

For me, I love the challenge of a fast-paced day! Our pubs need goods, and we are responsible for ensuring they have them! I get a great deal of satisfaction when all the deliveries that have been received from the customer services team, load planned by myself, picked by the warehouse team, loaded by the back shift team, and then delivered by the dray team. There is a lot of work that goes into getting the goods to our pubs and without the great teams I work with this wouldn’t be possible.

It’s nice to go home at the end of a busy day and know that what you had planned to achieve that day has been successful, it’s a great feeling. That’s especially true on challenging days like when it snows or when there are traffic delays.

It sounds like there are a lot of elements which need to be in place and in stock before the keys go in the ignition, aside from the physical loading of the elements on to the vehicles?

Yes, absolutely. Firstly, we need beer and that involves filling our tanker up at the brewery and then planning a driver to collect it. It’s then over to our production team to ensure we have enough stock to deliver to our pubs along with our buyer of various keg products and spirits/bottled products, so our business partners and managers have a variety of products to order.

Once the orders are placed with our customer service team that’s when my job kicks in, ensuring all our fleet are in service and ready are ready to roll out with their orders. Once I have planned all the orders onto vehicles and allocated dray teams to them, I release the orders to our warehouse team to get them picked and loaded onto the vehicles.

I suppose there will be times you might be staff down. How do you manage this, given that it’s all so precise and structured?

Generally, we work with additional team members on a shift to cover unexpected events. Holidays can be challenging to manage, as we must maintain a certain sized team, or the function doesn’t happen. We always need to account for unexpected sickness too, so trying to manage holidays during peak times when the pub estate is busy, and people want time off as well can be tough. We really do try but given the nature of the industry we are in, it’s not always achievable.

What’s the biggest challenge you’ve come across?

The biggest challenge for me was learning the world of the brewing industry and the transportation of the goods. I have worked in transport for 17 years and moved various goods around the country from live plants into garden centres (so timing of deliveries was vital, no one wants a drooping orchid!) to delivering letters and parcels to your doorstep.

Along with learning how goods are transported to our pub estate I also had to learn how we got the beer to Unicorn Packaging Centre (UPC) and that’s with our tanker fleet. Having never dealt with tankers before, that was a challenge as you must remember once the beer is transported to UPC, if you need to use the tanker again, you must plan in enough time for the tankers to be cleaned. A trailer needs a 5-minute sweep out and it’s good to go, a tanker clean can be anything up to 3 hours!

It’s International Woman’s Day this week and you currently lead a team where you’re the only female. Is there anything you notice being the only female in your team – or even being the leader of the team?

At times in the past, I have found it to be quite intimidating to be responsible for a large group of men, as a female, particularly when I was younger. I continue to develop the way I communicate as a manager, my door is always open, and I think that can turn negativity around from peers. Having started at entry level in transport and working my way up the ladder it helped me to further my knowledge across the industry and I achieved a first-time pass completion of my National and International CPC qualification which I’m extremely proud of.

Is there a particular skill you’ve developed over your time at Robinsons which you’re proud of?

I am a trained Mental Health First Aider and I enjoy that part of my role. It’s getting a larger part of my job and becoming more frequent. I think with everyone’s lives being so busy and when work is busy too, it can pile up on top of people. I have noticed that I’m just doing it naturally, without actually stepping into that role, per-se. It’s often not formalised and happens in the settings that people feel most comfortable in. We can get so tied up in our own lives, but I also think it’s important to check in with others, if they’re going through difficulties, or off sick, it’s just checking in that they’re doing ok and reminding them that I’m available to talk to.

So, how do you look after you?

I run and enjoy training at the gym. At present I’m training for the London Landmarks half marathon. It really helps me to manage my mental health when I’m outside in the fresh air.

That sounds like a minor plug for sponsorship there Sarah. Where can people head to if they are inspired to donate to the cause?

Any donations would be greatly appreciated, I’m halfway through my training plan and it’s getting tough, so seeing people donate really spurs me on.