Union Cartage had its origins as a lighterage company transporting goods from cargo vessels on the Thames to public wharfs in the heart of London.
Eventually lighterage companies began providing other services such as road transport from the docks to warehouses. The first frozen meat arrived by ship from Australia in 1880 followed by New Zealand in 1882. This meat was offloaded by hand and transported to cold stores around Smithfield market.
Union Cartage was acquired by the Vestey family in the early 1900s and grew to become one of the biggest meat hauliers in the country.
Immediately after WW2 the new Labour government nationalised all means of transport including the railways, bus and coach operators, the docks, canals, larger road hauliers etc. All these operations were grouped under the umbrella of the British Transport Commission (BTC).
By the 1960s the BTC had run into financial difficulties and was split up into smaller units with the road haulage co-operators moving to the Transport Holding Co. part of which was British Road Services (BRS) meat haulage.
In 1965 when road transport was finally privatised again, Union International (the Vestey group) bought a stake in BRS Meat Haulage and merged it with UCC.
The acquisitive Vestey family had a huge requirement for meat haulage to supply their wholesale (Weddle and Co) and retail (Dewhurst) butchers and possibly saw this merger as a way of controlling their own destiny.
Union Cartage’s main business was collecting frozen lamb from the Vestey owned Blue Star ships arriving at Liverpool, Avonmouth, Southampton and London. These frozen lamb carcasses were taken to the Vestey owned Union Cold Storage depots to be sold via the Vestey distribution network.
But containerisation was on the way and the days were numbered for the labour intensive man-handling of individual meat carcasses from a ship’s refrigerated hold. Added to this the supermarkets had started retailing meat and had little need of wholesalers on Smithfield market. The Vestey owned Dewhurst Butchers, once the cash cow of the group, soon fell to the onslaught from Tesco and Sainsburys. The raison d’être of the entire Vestey group was disappearing.
With the merger of UCC and BRS the Vesteys had inherited the BRS state owned structure; weak management and a strongly unionised workforce. Restrictive practises and huge inefficiencies were the name of the game. This caused operational and financial headaches even to the deep-pocketed Vestey family and gradually the company closed depots and sold off vehicles until a rump business was left.
There seemed little future for the business as it stood but the Vesteys were persuaded to take once last gamble with the future of the company and UCC moved from UK docks meat haulage to the brave new world of international refrigerated haulage.
But during this transformation the UCC management made a series of unfortunate decisions.
The old fleet was gradually replaced with Scania tractor units pulling 40 foot Crane Fruehauf trailers with Petter Thermo King refrigeration units.
But a 6 wheeled Scania coupled to a 40 foot Crane Fruehauf was so heavy that its legal carrying capacity was no more than 12 tonnes; less than the 20 foot trailers it had replaced. So every journey the Scanias made was potentially illegal before it started. In addition the Scanias were not ordered with sleeper cabs, despite the long continental journeys being planned.
In the early 1970s the UCC head office moved from small cramped offices on the corner of Charterhouse Street and Lindsey Street overlooking Smithfield market to a brand new purpose built depot in Warley near Brentwood.
In the new headquarters in Warley the Managing Director’s office had a large map table of Europe with a series of flags, which were moved each morning to show the location of each vehicle. Waiting outside he had a chauffeur driven E-Type Jaguar.
But the biggest obstacle to financial viability on international operations was the drivers’ unionised pay structure and allowances. The unions could legitimately insist on hourly rates, overtime pay and money for nights away from home, all of which severely impacted the company’s margins.
The omens were not good and the Managing Director only survived a few weeks at the new depot. After an unfortunate incident at the official depot opening he was summoned to Smithfield Head Office and dismissed. The E-type was sold and a new Managing Director was installed; he was issued with a much less exciting Austin 2200 which he had to drive himself.
His instructions were to make UCC financially viable as quickly as possible, or close it down. With little experience of road haulage he needed to have the business explained to him. Unsurprisingly the explanations made little business sense.
UCC’s traditional work in the London Docks had virtually disappeared. There was only a weak demand for the new international service and margins were slim. The work force was highly unionised, very well paid, and unused to competent management. The vehicle fleet was totally unsuited to the job in hand.
Despite these difficulties a huge effort was made to try and make something of the business. New and imaginative routes were developed including overland deliveries to Kuwait. But in the end UCC could not be made profitable and the haulage operations were closed down. Some business continued on freight forwarding basis and the remains of the fleet was used for truck hire. With the demise of the old Vestey group in 1990 the remains of UCC closed down.