The late Paddy Spratt literally built Spratt Transport Services up from scratch. Today, his sons Pady (MD) and Sam (Transport Manager) are proudly overseeing the business and are determined to keep things moving forward with purpose as a tribute to their father. We touched base with Pady to get an update on this extraordinary family business.
Spratt Transport Services is an exceptional bonded warehousing and transport company based in Santry, Dublin 9, adjacent to Dublin Airport, specialising in handling and stripping incoming freight / cargo shipments from groupage LCL and FCL containers and trailers from all over the world.
They hold, store and deliver for their customers as well as offering daily distribution throughout Ireland and Northern Ireland. For distribution, they collect and deliver next day to all 32 counties, covering a full range of pallet distribution – air, sea and road freight – every day. No consignment is deemed too large or too small – from a parcel to a full load.
Meanwhile, for freight forwarding customers, Spratt Transport Services covers Dublin Airport every morning and evening for collections and deliveries for both import and export shipments around the world. All drivers are airfreight security trained and the warehouse boasts airfreight ‘known cargo’ status to hold freight ready for shipping.
Since its inception in the early 1990s, Spratt Transport Services has delivered a professional and dedicated service to companies, collecting and delivering parcels, pallets, groupage loads, full loads and pretty much any type of cargo that one would care to mention. The business has gone from strength to strength since moving into its own 12,000 sq ft bonded warehousing and distribution centre in Furry Park in February, 2009.
This spacious facility is ideally located for the freight industry as it is just minutes from Dublin Airport, the Port Tunnel, the M1 and the M50. Contained within its own secure, fenced compound complete with CCTV and an alarm system, the warehouse allows Spratt Transport Services to provide a fully-bonded warehousing and distribution, road haulage, transport and handling service throughout Ireland.
Spratt Transport Services offers a full logistics service to customers from collection to holding stock, picking orders, preparing goods for distribution and putting shipments out for delivery. With a complete supply chain in place under one roof, they can take care of all their partners’ transport / logistics needs with a minimum of fuss.
From nothing, the vision and hard work of Paddy Spratt Snr. developed Spratt Transport Services into one of Ireland’s premier bonded warehousing and transport providers. Decades of blood, sweat and tears finally saw Paddy fulfil his lifelong ambition of operating a thriving family business, serving many of Ireland’s biggest companies from a prime location, using a state-of-the-art fleet of vehicles.
Needless to say, Paddy’s untimely passing in October. 2014 came as a major body blow to both the Spratt family and the business. Bravely, his sons Pady and Sam have vowed to keep the show on the road and they have set about the process of driving the business forward in memory of their late Dad. It certainly hasn’t been the way Pady Spratt – managing director of the family business at just 23 – would have envisioned things but he is determined to do his father proud:
“He was the driving force behind the business. He joined BenAir after doing his Leaving Cert and worked in an office handling general operations before they closed down two years later. He took a few of their customers and basically started off himself with a Mini Cooper. He used to have freight strapped to the top of the Mini and he built up his customer base slowly but surely.
“Eventually, he replaced the Mini with his first van and built it up to five drivers in total. Around ’09, he started dealing with a lot of bigger customers and that coincided with our move into the current premises here in Dublin 9. He now had the capacity to provide an even bigger and better service and things really started to take off. Even though the economy wasn’t at its best in 2009, he grew the business through the downturn and we now have eleven full-time employees as well as subcontractors and part-time staff.”
The second part of this article will be posted next week on Spratt Personal Shipping.
[This article originally appeared in the Irish Trucker Magazine.]
