James Horseman hadn’t planned to join the coaching industry until 2002 when he started working at the family business. 15 years on, James is now Company Director of Horseman Coaches. He speaks to us about his career in the industry
Q: How did you come to work for the family business?
A: I left school at 18, and went to Maidenhead Art College to study a fine art course. Frankly I got bored – I left after a year. When I was 17 I started playing golf, and after leaving college golf was where I wanted to go. At the age of 21 I turned professional. Just after my birthday I qualified for the PGA EuroPro Tour. I played seven seasons on the tour, and guess what happened? I got bored. In 2002, I came into the business. I worked in our transport office, which is the main hub of our business. I found that I quite enjoyed it. I did that for about nine years, and during that time worked very closely with my father to gain as much of his vast knowledge as I could. It’s stood me in good stead over the last five years, and I feel like I really found my feet in that time. I haven’t got bored yet. Over time you develop a passion for it and that fire gets ignited in your belly, and I’m still here.
Q: In 2008, the local authority served you with a purchase order for your premises. As a business, how did you overcome this challenge and continue to grow and thrive?
A: It was a Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO), and it’s an order that the local authority can place on homes, businesses, anywhere, in order to create improvements to a road junction. For many years we had a nomadic lifestyle – we’ve had six or seven different sites in our history, because it’s very hard to acquire land to house 60-100 plus vehicles, and we’re also not the best neighbour. We’re up early in the mornings, late at night, noisy…it’s difficult. Finally we’d found a site that was perfect for us, but within a few years we were served the CPO. It was probably the biggest challenge that I’ve faced. If you can’t relocate a fleet of 60-70 vehicles within a reasonably close area to where you currently are, you’ll lose your staff. We had to try find a plot of land that we could make fit for a coach depot. We only had 42 days to do that. The only place we could find was an old Panasonic distribution site, and that’s where we still are. Fortunately we acquired the land and made it fit for purpose, all while trying to seamlessly keep the operation on the road – we were still taking 5,000-plus children to school every day. It was a stressful time, not only for me but for my family.
Q: You recently made a £1.3m investment – what do you hope this will do for the business?
A: We are predominantly Volvo Plaxton. What we’ve tried to do over the last five years is create consistency with our fleet. Since 2013, we’ve bought 32 Volvo Plaxton’s. We’ve spent £7,024000 on vehicles in this five years. We want our fleet to be consistent with Plaxton, and we want a fleet which is less than 10 years old – which it now is. We’re also gearing ourselves for the ULEZ – a large part of what we do is London day trips, so we can’t afford not to comply with Euro 6. We now have 13 Euro 6 vehicles, so we’re on our way.
Q: Where would you like to see the business in five years’ time?
A: In five years’ time, I would like to see us still the dominant operator in Reading and Berkshire – the largest privately owned fleet. Obviously we hope that our profits continue to increase at the rate they are. There’s no reason, based on what we’re monitoring at the moment, to suggest we won’t be there.
