The Lobina Story

The Lobina Story

Our story starts when Lobina Transport’s owner Simon Lobina was a teenager, working for pocket money helping his father make deliveries in the family food and wine business.

Simon’s father Gino, who had moved to England in the 1960s, was importing quality Italian produce including olive oil, salami, pasta, tomatoes and wine and selling and delivering it to Italian families who had made their home in the Midlands and the North of England. These families missed the unique taste of home and visits from Gino Lobina’s delivery drivers were eagerly anticipated.

The foundations for Lobina Transport’s unique vision and values were laid here. The business thrived because of the long term relationships the Lobina family forged with the Italian community across the UK. Loyalty, reliability and honesty were their watchwords. Soon they were being asked to deliver parcels, arrange removals of furniture and many more transport jobs between Sardinia, Italy and the United Kingdom.

“It wasn’t like a traditional driver’s job,” remembered Simon. “We were invited in to the homes of our customers for meals, and to spend the night. We had earned their trust and their respect.”

“People buy from people they like and trust”

In 1986, after leaving school at the age of 16, Simon looked round for an opportunity to make more money. He landed a job with a major insurance company, but after only three days realised that this wasn’t the career path he wanted to take.

Instead he decided to use his passion for building a rapport with people to become a salesman for a well-known vacuum cleaner company. He was regularly the top salesman despite making the least appointments of any of the sales team.

“I learned quickly the valuable lesson that you have to sell yourself first,” said Simon. “People buy from people they like and trust.”

In fact, aged just 17, Simon broke the company sales record.

He was still helping out with the family transport business and aged 18 he passed the Certificate of Professional Competence for National and International Road Haulage with flying colours despite being the youngest in the group.

Time and mission-critical expertise develops

Persistence is another quality that Lobina Transport prizes and Simon showed tenacity when it came to driving. Ironically for a man whose careers has been built around transport, it took him three attempts to pass his ordinary driving test at 17 and seven attempts to get his Class 1 HGV licence at the age of 21.

After this, Simon hit the roads, constantly travelling between the UK and Italy building up first-hand experience of the transport business. He also worked as an agency driver between trips for the family business.

He developed a specialist reputation for being the person companies called in a crisis when they needed help with time and mission-critical deliveries – and so was born another element of expertise that sets the modern-day Lobina Transport apart from its competitors.

Simon came to see that there was always going to be a cap on how much he could earn as a lone driver, and with a wife and a young family to support he began to think about the next stage of his business journey.

In the summer of 2001, after 10 years of driving, Simon was involved in accident – not his fault – in which someone lost their life. This left him very troubled and no longer willing to be out on the roads as a driver.

It was time to use the experience he had gained to direct transportation and logistics operations.

Always have an alternative plan

He began to work alone out of a small flat above his mother’s shop. He organised and commissioned other drivers to move domestic loads and transport the shipments he used to drive himself. At this stage, 99% of his business was still between Italy and the UK.

As the business grew, Simon moved in to his first office in Orston, Nottinghamshire, working in collaboration with two other companies that specialised in imports and IT.

“I learned a lot at this time. One of the most valuable lessons, which I instil in my employees today is that you don’t turn down a plan unless you have a good reason and an alternative way of doing it,” said Simon.

In 2004, Simon registered the domain name Lobina.co.uk – a sign of things to come.

Lobina Transport Services became a Limited Company the following year and Simon moved out and onwards to employ his own staff at new premises in Trowell.

In 2007 came another move to Webster’s Yard in Ilkeston, to accommodate new staff and bigger warehouse facilities. The Lobina team now had eight employees.

Simon said: “From being out on the road I was now at a computer from 6am to 8pm and often longer. I saw the value in being available 24/7 when people had the greatest needs. When I was younger I would never have imagined I could find fulfilment in being office-based. But I loved the interaction of building relationships and negotiating on the telephone. It pulled together the skills I had developed as a youngster, building long-term relationships and selling. It’s always challenging, never boring, and I love the excitement of closing a deal and then putting the plan together and into operation.”

Fast forward to 2023 where Lobina Transport now have 27 employees and counting - spread across two sites: HQ in Ilkeston, UK and Lodz, Poland which was opened as an additional office 8 years ago and has proved a pivotal link between UK and mainland Europe. Both offices are headed by Managing Director Luigi Lobina, supported by his management team of Niko, Vaidas and Szymon. Together with Simon, Luigi has been a key player in the expansion of the business and has enabled the company to grow in stature and now attract the many blue chip companies that it currently works with today.

A real show of intent in 2023 has been the expansion of the Business Development Team, bringing onboard Ashley & James to work alongside Lucio to push Lobina to even greater heights through the acquisition of new clients.

Despite it's exponential growth, Lobina will never lose sight of its roots, shown no more so than the delivery of homemade pizzas brought into the office every Friday by the Director, Simon!