The first time you visit the north Shropshire headquarters and main waste transfer facility of AR Richards, be prepared to believe you’re at the wrong place. Only the discreet sign at the entrance to the tree-lined avenue, to one side of which is the neatly landscaped visitors’ car park and a modern detached building containing the offices, confirms that you’re not actually arriving at an upmarket caravan site. There’s not a wire fence festooned with windblown scraps of paper to be seen anywhere, not least because the neighbours wouldn’t appreciate it, but we’ll come back to that later.
AR Richards’ business roots stem from 1980 when the late Alyn Raymond Richards, Anthony Raymond Richards (Tony) and Sheilagh Richards began the agricultural contracting operation that is still a significant part of the business. Although it has since expanded and diversified, the business has never moved far from its original home at Norton in Hales, near the Shropshire town of Market Drayton. That original farm is still home to the agricultural business, but the remainder of the operation comprising transport and logistics, waste management, construction and plant hire, and a builders’ merchant and more, are all based on sites at Tern Hill, on the other side of Market Drayton.
Remaining under family control, the company is still in the hands of managing directors Tony and Sheilagh, and their children, operation and sales director Andrew Richards, and finance director Sam Richards.
We first encountered AR Richards during the recent MAN roadshow hosted at Chirk by local dealer AN Richards (CM 7 December), where operations manager Michael Dauscha, and transport manager Stuart Williams, who was the host for our subsequent visit to head office, were on hand to keep an eye on one of their batch of four new MAN TGX 26.520 6x2 tag tractor units – among the first to enter service on UK roads.
The company’s involvement in road transport dates back to early 2008, when the decision was made to diversify the business, incorporating waste management into the company portfolio. For this, three Scanias were hired in. This initial fleet consisted of 18-tonne and 32-tonne skip wagons and a 26-tonne refuse trucks. In 2009, the first truck purchased was a Scania, which remained the brand of choice until 2019, when primary allegiance switched to DAF.
The DAFs currently on the fleet include LFs up to 18 tonnes, then CFs above that. These include a pair of 71-reg FAW rear-steer tridem 8-wheel RCVs. Both of the RCVs carry the words ‘John Batha – gone fishing’ – a tribute to a fondly remembered employee. The firm hasn’t yet tried out the CF’s XD replacement, but Stuart Williams has managed a test drive in an XG, which left him with a positive impression.
Scania may no longer provide the majority of the fleet, but there are still five in service, including P410 8x4s, two tippers and a hook-loader, and a couple of smaller skip wagons, a P320 and a latestgeneration P280. From the other side of the Traton family, the MANs on the inventory comprise the four new TGX 26.520 6x2 tag tractor units and a TGS 32.430 8x4 tipper.
The TGX tractor units were the company’s first experience of purchasing from AN Richards, but it has plenty of positive experience of the Welsh firm’s renowned aftercare thanks to a history of utilising its extensive rental fleet. Williams says: “Whenever we get a problem, the beauty is you can always speak to the main man, Bryn Richards. That’s part of the reason we’ve stayed with the MANs, because we knew we were going to get their support as the aftersales service is second to none.”
The arrival of the four tractor units has taken rather longer than expected – some two-and-a-half years after being ordered in 2021 thanks to Covid and the supply chain issues, during which time the engine specs changed. But they were finally delivered in September 2023, complete with the required tag axles. In the meantime, an ex-demo TGS tipper was acquired in 2022.
The fleet also includes one other link to earlier days, when it included a Dennis RCV. A fully operational ex-Essex County Fire and Rescue Service Dennis Rapier fire appliance stands in readiness in case of a worst-case scenario.
AR Richards’ in-house vehicle repairs only extend to a small general maintenance team, which carries a small stock of fast-moving items such as mirrors, lamp lenses and bulbs. All vehicle six-weekly inspections and maintenance are carried out by the relevant franchised dealer, which is to say Greenhous in Shrewsbury for DAF, West Pennine in Telford for Scania, and AN Richards.
Staff welfare is a key priority at AR Richards, and every new employee in the whole group gets a full day’s company induction, which includes health and safety. Other job-specific training is conducted in-house, including banksman, working at height, manual handling and asbestos awareness, to name but a few. Driver training and assessment are conducted, while driver CPCs are soon to be carried out on-site by Dulson Training. Regardless of position and title, all staff embrace continued professional development, recently attending an RHA traffic commissioner’s seminar in Walsall, and they also regularly participate in legal firm Backhouse Jones’ fortnightly webinars.
Compliance is taken extremely seriously. Tachomaster remote downloading, 360-degree cameras and tracking give instant feedback on driving infringements and incidents. Start-ofday checks on PDAs contribute to the paperless management regime provided by the Weighsoft dedicated waste management software package. With some 40% of the company’s business coming from the skip hire business, live allocation of shortnotice jobs is essential to keep the fleet moving.
Williams says: “Beforehand, we were very paper orientated. But having now invested in industryspecific software such as Weighsoft, we are saving additional time, money and resources. The software allows us to meet both the company’s and customers’ ever increasing requirements. We can change any one driver’s work instantly, a notification of which the end user obtains via a PDA. This allows us to become much more efficient and competitive. The same goes for the builders’ merchant asset, as builders usually want it now, or preferably yesterday. Then, with the inert materials and aggregate deliveries, it is a simple process to implement.
“In the oldest established part of the business, the agricultural contracting, some customers are farmers who’ve been clients for more than 45 years, thus showing loyalty and trust in our ability to provide a competitive and reliable service.”
The company has a total workforce of over 100, including 30 drivers. Pending the recruitment of a new transport manager, Williams is named on the O-licence, which specifies 30 vehicles and 12 trailers, although there are just over 20 trucks and six trailers currently on the fleet. The trailers are an assortment comprising moving-floor bulker, tipper, ejector, curtainsider and flatbed, while the addition of a low-loader for moving the firm’s own plant, which includes 360 excavators, crushers, and much more, is being actively investigated.
AR Richards maintains a high degree of social responsibility. One of the meeting rooms hosts a large montage of photography of charitable activities. In 2022, the firm participated in a number of trips to Poland carrying humanitarian aid for Ukraine. It also supports a number of charities closer to home. Complementing a pair of existing charity-themed DAFs, the four new MAN tractors are liveried in support of the four different charities it supports: Hope House, the Azalea Trust, Midlands Air Ambulance and the Royal British Legion Poppy Appeal.
The waste management operation now covers an area of north Wales down as far as Newtown, and in England from Manchester down to Warwickshire. Notable clients include Welsh Water and HM Prison Birmingham. The entrance to the site proudly displays the current recycling rate, at the time of our photographer’s visit showing approximately 97% saved from landfill. General waste is sorted manually, under cover in one of the hangars. The company recycles anything, from plasterboard to clay to green waste. The inert hard materials go through the McCloskey crusher, producing a range of graded construction products. Among its other output is trade food waste, sent to an anaerobic digester at Halfway, near Shrewsbury. One particular job involves travelling to Pontrilas, in the south of Herefordshire, to collect sawmill waste for processing, along with other general wood for retailing through the builders’ merchant. Another offshoot is transporting concrete sleepers from Network Rail depots, some of which go widely across the UK, but many are sold to farms and the like for building farm roads, cow tracks and pads.
Bringing in all this material involves a sizeable inventory of skips. The 579 skips for the 18-tonners range from 4 to 12cu yards, while 106 larger roll-on roll-off skips have capacities from 15 to 55cu yards. Then there are the Euro-bins handled by the RCVs, carrying from 240 to 1,100 litres of trade waste.
