Fastway Couriers opens Depot in Mullingar

Fastway Couriers, Ireland's leading independently owned parcel collection and delivery service, will now be making its mark in Mullingar with the opening of a sub depot in Clonmore Business Park.Billy Kehoe, Regional Franchisee at Fastway Couriers (Midlands) explains why Fastway Courier's award winning approach to business will ensure that their customers receive only the highest standard of customer service."The new Mullingar Depot will be the operating base for five new Fastway Couriers Franchisees. Operating from Mullingar, these new Courier Franchisees will cover Longford and Westmeath. The new franchises are all locally owned and operated with David Nevin covering the Athlone Area, Lisa Whelan covering the Castlepollard area, James Ennis covering the Mullingar Town, Eddie Byrne covering North Mullingar and Pavel Formanek covering South Mullingar."Locally owned and locally operated is key to the businesses' success. They are independently owned businesses so it is imperative of each local operator to act on their own initiative, offer reliability and flexibility and ultimately exceptional customer service," explains Billy.Fastway in the Fast LaneFastway Couriers has experienced rapid growth in Ireland and its nationwide expansion is creating many more opportunities for franchisees to join its success story. Established in 2002, Fastway Couriers (Ireland) operates a unique, easy to use, low cost, next day, parcel collection and delivery service through a franchise system. It is the world's largest courier franchise operation and the only fully franchised courier service operating in Ireland, offering franchisees the opportunity to own their own business.Now operating throughout the island of Ireland, Fastway Couriers specialises in low cost deliveries for businesses of all sizes with an easy to use pre-paid label system with flat rates and no complicated pricing.Billy Kehoe is Regional Franchisee at Fastway Couriers (Midlands), which is part of the overall collection and delivery service Fastway Couriers Ireland.Billy has been in his current position as Regional Franchisee with responsibility for managing and developing the franchise in the Midlands since November 2008.Billy previously worked with Fastway Couriers Ireland as Business Development Manager where he trained and developed the sales team. With a total of 16 years of sales and business development experience, Billy also holds a B.A. in Business Management from the Irish Management Institute.Staying LocalThe choice of Mullingar as a strategic location for a Fastway Couriers sub depot follows on from the ten percent increase in Courier Franchisees in the region, the 17 percent increase in customer acquisition in 2009 and seven new positions created in the same year."The sub depot at Mullingar is part of a much bigger picture for business development in the midlands region. Mullingar was chosen as a location because it is a Gateway town and has an excellent strategic location for Westmeath and Longford. The regional franchise for the Midlands services Laois, Kildare, Offaly, Westmeath, Longford and North Tipperary. The central hub is based in Portarlington but we saw that Mullingar had great potential and we decided to open a sub depot there to offer the area a much greater service."Billy also believes Mullingar has much to offer the business community:"We basically felt that as well as a great strategic location from a business perspective, Mullingar has such strong potential in terms of size and local businesses. We already have a number of strong existing customers in the town including Wines Direct and Modern Labelling System (MLS)," explains Billy.Fastway Couriers offers a next day delivery throughout 32 counties. Having a local sub depot will facilitate local businesses by offering a much later pick up time and a reliable, flexible service."The fact that the franchisees independently own their own business means that the entire success lies within their initiative. Franchisees work harder to offer exceptional customer service, reliability and the fact that they are local people operating in an area where they are well known and have good local awareness means they have a driven mind set from the beginning.The local aspect of the business is one of the key ingredients of our success. Now that locally owned and locally based business will be bringing its exceptional customer service to the greater Mullingar area," says Billy.Fast ForwardSpeaking about the future of Fastway Billy Kehoe believes the company will only build on the success of 2009, and succeed in the face of a 30 percent decline in the parcel delivery sector last year.Nationally, Fastway Couriers won a contract with the UK's largest home delivery company, Home Delivery Network Ltd (HDNL) for all their Irish parcel deliveries, including Littlewoods Ireland, in a two and a half year contract - moving Fastway Couriers (Ireland) into the B2C market."In the current recessionary environment, businesses and individuals are looking at minimising their overheads. Our unique pre-paid label system means that our prices are not only very competitive, but they help our customers manage their cashflow by purchasing pre-paid labels in line with their business needs.""In addition, due to the success of the franchise model, in 2009 we saw an increase of 10 percent in the number of Courier Franchisees in the Midlands alone. This reflects an overall national increase of 22 percent throughout the 32 counties. We see this figure growing further as our business continues to expand in 2010."Fastway Couriers are looking forward to an even more successful year in 2010. The opening of a new sub depot in Mullingar is expected to accommodate growth and is part of a national strategy. There is also the expectation of job creation creating up to 20 new positions over the next two years through additional Courier Franchise territories and additional support staff."Fastway provides a low price, easy to use system which disposes with the cost of unnecessary extras.The concept works on a simple pre-paid label and satchel system, giving customers further savings on their freight bill, quick and easy dispatch, no accounts to reconcile and greater control over their freight. All labels and satchels are bar-coded, enabling goods to be scanned for track and trace information. The new sub-depot is based at Unit 29B, Clonmore Industrial Estate.If you would like further information about Fastway Couriers (Midlands), please talk to your local Courier Franchisee or call Pat Madden on087 2233 960.You can also visit our websiteat www.fastway.ie