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INTERVIEW THE BIG
By Ged Henderson
IN ASSOCIATION WITH:
VIEW ON DEMAND
A DRIVING FORCE
Sandra Cottam-Shea’s route into the world of haulage and logistics was anything but straightforward.
Looking at her CV it doesn’t immediately strike you that she was heading towards founding a transport company that 11 years on operates across Europe and has a turnover in the region of £3.5m.
Sandra was raised in Preesall from farming stock, trained as a nurse at Blackpool Victoria Hospital, went on to spend 19 years as a senior member of British Airways’ long haul cabin crew and had a stint in an emergency services joint control room. She also has a degree in public health.
Today she owns and runs SCS Logistics, which has its headquarters in a yard a stone’s throw from the Port of Heysham.
SCS began with three vehicles and five members of staff. It now has 37 trucks and 35 staff and has moved into logistics with a new state-of- the-art fully automated warehouse on the White Lund Industrial estate in Morecambe.
Looking back on her journey she reveals she only applied for the British Airways job “as a joke”. At the time she was nursing at London’s internationally renowned Hammersmith Hospital. She ended up as purser on long haul flights across the globe, with a hectic schedule for a mum of two daughters.
SCS is the result of Sandra looking for new challenges. She says: “I saw the opportunity but at the start I really was clueless.
“I knew next to nothing about the industry and I had to learn very, very quickly. I didn’t even know what a P&L was. Some guys from the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency paid us a visit and I was, ‘just who are you people?’”
She is full of praise for those who supported her, including current director Sarah Metcalfe who has been with the business since day one. “I couldn’t have managed without her,” she says.
Sandra is quite a rare breed as a woman owner of a specialist haulage company but says gender is irrelevant in the world of work she occupies. She says: “My dad Ron always had a can-do attitude, that comes from farming. He was always, ‘You can do this’.”
She adds: “There are now more women at senior management level than 10 years ago which is great to see. Logistics has become more sophisticated and there is more acceptance of women. We have women drivers.
We care that our customers’
freight gets to where it should be, on time and intact
“Operations used to be half a dozen wagons run on the back of a cigarette packet. Now there are technical systems, management systems, planning systems.”
There are also many challenges that have had to be faced. “The last two years, you couldn’t have made it up, could you?” she says.
“Brexit, Covid, alleged fuel shortages, reports of driver shortages. Now we can’t buy wagons.”
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