Breffni Couriers
PRINCIPALS
DEPOT
JOINED
Brian & Geraldine O’Reilly
112 – Monasterboice, Co. Louth
2004
Brian and Geraldine O’Reilly were cautious about joining the new pallet network. I’d been approached by another network,’ said Brian, ‘but I didn’t have the same confidence in them that I had in the TPN principals.’ After plenty of detailed discussions, they agreed to join the network. Their truck was the first to arrive at the night hub on 8 June 2004 with nationwide freight.
Brian and Geraldine O’Reilly began Breffni Couriers in 1987. At the time Brian was working as a rep for an agricultural machine company in Dublin and noticed that that orders were not arriving on schedule. Identifying a gap they researched the market, targeted ten potential clients, bought a truck and offered service whereby Brian would arrive at their premises every day at a particular time and pick up their freight. However, communication was not easy. When Geraldine was pregnant, she remained by the phone and communicated the collections to Brian via CB radio. When mobile phones came on the market, he leased one. It was expensive but it gave him ready access to his customers and base.
Breffni Couriers is now one of the biggest inputters into the network and the company is very skilled in balancing the number of pallets in and out. This is one way for a company to get the best value out of the network. Brian is quick to point out that “The customer is King, not the network. The network is a tool to distribute the pallets. It is all about co-operation between depots. TPN is run so professionally. We know when we tell our customers we can move their goods to any part of the country overnight that it’s going to be done. This is very important to us.”
