The take over of Barlow and the rest has been a disaster for Briggs in the UK and the people in Texas must be thinking what happened to the word profit. They now need a big shake up from the top and need to steady the business or to look for a sale and cut their loses.

From what i here Briggs in the UK is a total mess and will take years to sort out and even longer to turn round with loses mounting over the next couple of years will Briggs in the US want all this liability

They have had a call out rota since the Lex Harvey days it's only compulsory in the areas they can't get enough engineers to cover it. Example if they have a team of ten engineers and no one wants to cover the call out then it's split between all of them, which would be a week in every 10 on call. Plus they are paid about 200 a week just for being on call and it used to be 4 hours time and a half for being called out. I'd do it if I was still there

Compulory 24 Hr stand by rota? Have n't heard of that Bert......but has anyone else?

Would this be for container handlers only?

Ive heard the only thing keeping briggs engineers at briggs are their years service and the hope of being made redundant.
And they are enforcing a compulsory 24 hour stand by rota.

With the industry facing a major shortage of talented engineers, which company will be first to tempt away these engineers with a better pay package ?

But I suppose people's feelings are not issued on a spreadsheet or graph , so they don't exist in 'briggsworld' !!

You can only kick a dog so many times before it either starts biting you, or will run off !

Lets hope that the texans arrive soon and have a massive clearout at the top and also the middle management hangers on and henchmen. They will have to strip and butcher the company to get their money back, getting reputation and respect back will take much longer if the will exists.

Just look at the mess they have made of DLS. Almost twenty years of profit and good relations with the customer under BW ruined in less than two with these ignorant idiots.
You can buy a successful business but you cannot buy success. You have to work for it.

Yet another missed opportunity... Briggs did exactly the same when they bought out Lex Harvey... Lost most of the business that they acquired and ended up being no bigger than they were before they spent the Americans millions. Too much "US" and them again continually blaming the bought out company staff instead of concentrating on finding out who the good one's are from both company's and building up a knowledge base to help the company move forward, but oh no the old boys circle stays the same !!! Giving customers a service not talking about it in that frigging joke company comic...

Feel sorry for the people in Cannock that have been made redundant, it wont be long before the engineers are in the same boat as I hear some are sitting about with no work to do... Top men need to go this time !!!

Buying other forklift companies is not the answer to success, many have tried this and failed due to there fleets being tied and ready for the scrap heap, Briggs have only grown in this way,and not by customer satisfaction,look at the real players,Linde,Toyota,best kit and good Rv,s at the end of the contract,that's what will give you success.Briggs are paying around 26k but the smaller companies are paying 30k if you know your trucks and with this, comes the people factor I,e we are humans not machines

Totally agree DonkeyPunch re the old boys club. What a threat to the big boys Briggs could have been. Opportunity missed by them.

Buying companies only gives you scale and coverage, growing organically at the same times doubles or trebles your total impact to the market.

It is a shame for those involved in these cut backs, the redundancy message say's control cost, not attack the market.

You have summed it up, until you get rid of the old boys club at the top, not much will change, for the better. Buying Nacco, even if they did have enough money wouldnt be the answer because they would mess that up too.

I agree with clockwatcher, i would not call sales men shady but you will find the engineers blame the sales reps , the sales reps blame the office staff, the office staff blame the company cat, But really the blame if any lies with the Directors the people at the top who come up with the strategy, how to compete with lower cost manufactures who will be doing well, the Lower cost service companies who are interdependent who will be doing well. Because from what we are told the market is picking up and there is quite a lot of business out there so some must be getting it.

The right move fro Briggs is just go and buy NACCO and then you will have the solution,

By the very nature of their job the salesmen are a shady bunch but their ways of working and limits are set by the directors so it would be unfair to blame them for the failings of the company. The old boys club at the top will always be responsible for whether we fail or succeed.

I do think the sales force and their management have a lot to answer for.

I hope that you are right, but if trucks arnt sold and the customers go away, as many long term BW customers continue to do, less engineers will be required. On the positive side good engineers will not be out of work for long. Simple answer to your statement on the structure will be a resounding NO, arrogance is the same no matter what accent it is spoken in. Reducing staff is not the answer, getting more business is, and if you cant then you need to find out why and get it sorted, and I doubt it is the salesmen fault......

The engineers earn the money, everybody else is an overhead. Have these people learnt nothing from the top heavy structure of BW.