MTvan, Courier Finance Ltd & Tim Gilbert: Physician, heal thyself

It looks like Tim Gilbert has finally exposed himself as the arse that I’d always suspected he was. Tim of course is (or maybe was, who knows) head of the failed (or maybe failing, who knows) Courier Finance Ltd ’empire’, which included Speed Couriers, MTvan, CFL and some slightly dodgy-looking ‘learn how to be a courier’ websites designed to either part courier owner-drivers from their cash or to steer them towards the Mtvan website which would do the same.

Somewhat of a self-proclaimed courier industry guru, Tim is quite profuse with his advice to other, less experienced, businessmen on how they should run their same day courier businesses. Some would say that he was well qualified to give such advice, having started Speed Couriers from scratch (along with Martin Rutty) and then apparently playing his part in steering it through its troubles in 2001-02.

The collapse of OnDigital, one of Speed’s largest customers, and their foray into the home delivery market caused severe problems for the business back in 2002, so it might be expected that Tim would be more wary than most of allowing a single customer to become too important to the business, of allowing a business with no history of profitable trading to run up a significant (and Read More…

Posted under Courier and Freight Exchanges, Courier Business

Posted by alec at 11:13 am, September 16, 2008

Tags: , ,

MTvan gone bust?

For some weeks I’ve been controlling my anger about the latest shady trick played by Courier Finance Ltd, the owners of MTvan.com. I’d planned to write something in the next few days about their way of doing business, which I’ve considered for some time to be slightly less than honest and open.

Not content with lying to their original members about their membership fees giving them life membership, they sneakily bought the courier forum www.link4couriers.com while hiding its ownership from its members, saturating the site with advertising for their associated (and I think highly questionable) business ventures and claiming for two years that it was “by far the largest independent forum for couriers and courier owner drivers”. Independent my arse, about as independent as their courier exchange site that was actually run by a company that was quietly in competition with many of its members.

Anyway, it seems that events have overtaken me and I won’t get the chance to launch the scathing attack on their business that I had intended to. It turns out that the experienced businessmen at Courier Finance Ltd decided that after Amtrak had gone into liquidation in 2007 it would be a good idea to extend credit terms to the newly-formed Netfold Ltd, which bought the business from the liquidators. It also appears that they didn’t notice when Netfold failed to file its first accounts on time in March 2008 and seemingly continued to provide credit to them until they went into administration at the Read More…

Posted under Courier and Freight Exchanges, Courier Scams

Posted by alec at 7:41 pm, September 10, 2008

Tags: , , , ,

Amtrak goes into administration again

I know there are a few same day courier companies who’ve been subcontracting to Amtrak who will have had their fingers burnt, yet again, on this one. A bit of homework could probably have avoided most serious losses.

Yes, Amtrak Express Parcels has gone bump for the second time in 20 months. This time it’s Netfold Ltd, the ‘white knight’ that bought the business from the administrators of Amtrak Express Parcels Limited in January 2007, that’s been put into administration.

This one caught me by surprise a bit – I predicted last summer that one of the parcel networks had less than a year to survive, but not Amtrak. As it turns out the two companies that I’d earmarked as possible contenders for the wooden spoon have both reported increasing turnover and profits, the one that I predicted would do great things this year seems to be in terminal decline and now Amtrak, acquired on presumably very good terms from the administrators, has gone into administration.

Alarm bells first started to ring in April when I noticed that Netfold Ltd had failed to file its accounts by the due date. It may seem slightly naïve of me but I’ve always held the belief that a company that doesn’t file its accounts by the due date is either suffering from incompetent management, Read More…

Posted under Courier Business

Posted by alec at 4:29 pm, August 26, 2008

Tags: , , , , , ,