Despite the slow but steady process of returning to normal, the gaps in the calendar resulting from cancelled events has undoubtedly been felt by the industry, but that hasn’t meant a total halting of operations. Switching from high profile events to a sole focus on private clientele has been a crucial move and existing commitments have been fulfilled in the face of the Covid-19 restrictions.
“Coronavirus has obviously had an effect. Events have been cancelled on an international basis and not just in the UK and Europe. A notable one for us this year is going to be the cancellation of Monterey week. Amelia Island and Scottsdale took place pre-coronavirus, we were in Scottsdale in January, out in Amelia in March and the third big one in our year is Monterey week so that’s certainly going to put a hole in this ship.
“UK and European events make up such a large part of what we do, especially this time of year. With the cancellation of events such as Essen, Goodwood, the RM auction, Tour Auto, Mille Miglia – we support all of those events and the historic racing events alongside those. The cancellation of those events has had a direct impact on the number of trucks we’re using at the moment.
“It’s encouraging to see that we have seven or eight trucks out at the moment and none of those trucks are relying on event traffic. They’re out there doing things for private clients and dealers.
“With international shipping and sea freight, there’s a much longer lead time in how long it takes to do something. When coronavirus came about in the UK and lockdown happened, we still had a load of shipments on the sea from the ERA event in New Zealand. We shipped all the cars over to that and they were on their way back.
“The Rally the Globe event in Kenya, we were shipping all the cars back from that and there was another event by Rally Round in South Africa. All of these events – 25 cars plus – these events happened before the coronavirus came about.
“Even though we were sat here and our trucks were quiet, over the course of three or four weeks we had a hundred cars come in from all different destinations that needed handling as normal. We couldn’t shut our business even in these difficult times.”
