The desperate financial situation at TAL Logistics Group in the run-up to its April collapse led to it mortgaging virtually every truck or trailer that its subsidiary companies owned, MT can reveal.
Companies House filings in the month before its administration show that each of the haulage firms in the group effectively signed over assets - mostly trailers - to Barclays as security on group borrowing that totalled over £2.5m.
TAL Logistics had built up through the acquisition of a number of North-East-based haulage firms, trading as TAL Galaxy, TAL Freeway, Phillips (Seahouses), Gallacher Bros (Haulage) and TAL Eurospecial.
However, according to TAL Logistics Group's accounts covering the 12 months ended 31 March 2009, there were already problems in the group: both TAL Galaxy and Gallacher (Bros) made losses in the period totalling £276,303.
More worryingly, the accounts, filed in January this year, contain a warning about the viability of the company, noting that it could only carry on thanks to the continued support of its bankers.
At that point, the firm had made a pre-tax profit of £258,759, with net current liabilities of £l,9l7,837. In the same period, the firm's two directors, Neil Taylor and Richard Shaw, paid themselves a dividend totalling £145,547.
Jim Phillips, who sold Phillips (Seahouses) to TAL Logistics two years ago, reveals that Taylor approached him at the beginning of March this year offering to sell the business back to him for around £50,000. Grant Thornton later approached him with a similar deal as it scrambled to find a buyer for the group prior to its administration on 12 April.
Phillips is owed £250,000 from the sale of the firm; the second of three deferred payments was due on 5 April. Taylor warned that TAL would be unable to meet the April payment, Phillips adds. He says: "I'm quite bitter about it; [the firm] was making good profits and those profits were not affected after the sale."
Phillips also points out that when he sold the Belford-based company it was debt-free, save for two trucks on finance.
Yet barely two years after the sale, debt, excluding a cross-guaranteed loan to Barclays, had ballooned to £739,109, with unsecured creditors taking the total to over £1m.
