03 Jul Building a lifelong relationship – Turners of Soham

Having been in business since 1957, Gray & Adams has been in the fortunate position of witnessing significant changes and innovations in the industry, as well as seeing our customer’s businesses grow. Due to this, it is not often that we work with businesses that have been running for longer than us, but we are always delighted to support industry stalwarts.

One such business is Turners of Soham, who have been operating since 1930 when brothers Wallace and Frank Turner bought their first vehicle and began delivering loads from their father’s farm in Soham, Cambridgeshire. Since then. Turners of Soham has gone from strength to strength, growing to being one of the largest privately owned transport companies in the UK.

Turners of Soham has had a similar journey to growth as Gray & Adams, both starting as a family business and then progressing to being a nationwide employer over the many decades. As such, Gray & Adams connects with the values of Turners and has developed a strong relationship as a trusted partner in their operations.

To discuss this relationship, and the most recent orders placed by Turners of Soham, we speak with Tim King, Group Fleet Engineer.

Tim tells us,

“I’ve been working with Turners of Soham for around 22 years and as such, I’ve known the team at Gray & Adams for a long time. The size of our fleet is fairly significant and out of the 4,000 trailers that we run, 750 of them are refrigerated. The majority of which are G&A. The reason that we work with the team at Gray & Adams is we have that personal relationship with them where the lines of communication remain open and if we have to change something with the spec, they are open to exploring different options with us. We’ve not that same experience with other competitors where the product feels really off the shelf”

When discussing the most recent order, Tim shares

“Back in November 2022, we approached Gray & Adams as we were looking to place an order for 40 single deck trailers fitted with Thermo King fully electric fridges. We also required the trailers to be fitted with BPW axles which is our standard axle that we use across the business to increase efficiency in repairs and servicing and reduce the number of spare parts we have in stock.”

He adds,

“We understood that with the electric fridge, the initial investment would be higher, and the payload would be slightly reduced but the benefits outweigh this as we would be reducing the CO2 output which is becoming increasingly even more important to us and our customers. The sustainability commitments are something which we are more and more aware that we need to uphold as a business as part of operating responsibly and we are seeing that many tenders do have environmental considerations.”

Further adding to his comments on the strength of relationship, Tim mentions that they are looking to order further trailers from Gray & Adams,

“Gray & Adams are renowned for unrivalled quality. The robustness of the trailer body is something we really value as it ensures that the asset hold its value and integrity for longer periods. We do have a yearly buying cycle to keep our fleet fresh and up to date and we have already been in touch with the team to order a further 40 trailers for October taking into account the longer length trailers which have now been approved for use.”