Superbike Factory collapse: The small bike logistics firm left thousands out of pocket

For motorcycle dealers, logistics is one of those things that tends to just happen in the background. Bikes arrive and then leave once sold, and, provided everything turns up when it should, nobody gives much thought to the people actually doing the moving.

For The Bike Bus, however, the collapse of Superbike Factory has left a rather more painful reminder of just how much of the motorcycle industry's machinery was tied into the business.

The family-run motorcycle logistics company was moving up to 30 bikes a week for Superbike Factory during the period leading up to its collapse. That included transporting machines between its various sites and delivering motorcycles to customers around the country. Now, it says it is thousands of pounds in the hole due to the failed motorcycle retailer.

"It's a substantial amount for a small company," The Bike Bus owner Jacqui told Visordown. "We rely heavily on cash flow. As it comes in, it goes out, so it's got to keep coming in." 

The Bike Bus started working with Superbike Factory in the company's earlier years, before a change in personnel brought that relationship to an end. The two businesses subsequently began working together again around the start of last year, with the workload increasing dramatically as the year went on.

"We got an absolute shed load of work," Jacqui said. "We're a small family firm. We've got four vans, and we were regularly doing about 30 bikes a week for them."

The work involved collecting motorcycles from Superbike Factory's various locations, including Bradford, Crawley, Bristol, Donington and Macclesfield, before transporting them around the UK. A large proportion of the bikes were heading north into Scotland, although they also carried out deliveries in the opposite direction.

It wasn't simply the number of motorcycles being moved that became an issue. Jacqui says the information supplied with some jobs could be unreliable, with The Bike Bus occasionally being asked to collect motorcycles or deliver them to customers only to discover that the original arrangement had changed.

"The arrangements were quite hit and miss," she said. "They would often send us details of a job that no longer existed, or customers had been waiting for what turned out to be about three months."

That put The Bike Bus drivers in the awkward position of dealing directly with customers who were already frustrated about waiting for their motorcycles. That situation that had nothing to do with the logistics firm, although, according to Jacqui, their conversations with the affected customers often helped calm things down.

"[Some] very, very irate customers, and then when we got in touch with customers, everything kind of got better for them," she said. "Some even commented on it. They thanked us for our communication and good service and making it better for them."

The more serious problem came in the final weeks before Superbike Factory's collapse, with payments becoming increasingly difficult to obtain. She went on to say that it got steadily harder to get through to anyone in the accounts department.

"Things got very difficult with payments, and I would frequently chase them daily," she said. "No one would answer the phone, no one would talk to me. I couldn't speak to anybody in accounts."

The Bike Bus had one main contact at Superbike Factory, Jacqui says, but that person was unable to provide any clear explanation for why payments were not being made.

"He would say, 'Oh, I don't know what's happening. I'm really sorry. I'll find out for you,'" she recalled. By then, the financial exposure was becoming particularly uncomfortable for such a small business. Compounding the problem was an additional driver the company employed, specifically to cope with the volume of work coming directly from Superbike Factory. Jacqui says the extra employee had moved bikes for the company but that none of those jobs had been paid for.

"So his wages and fuel and everything else, we've had to stump up out of our own pocket," she said.

The consequences have extended beyond the unpaid invoices, with the collapse leaving a significant hole in workload during what would normally be one of its busiest periods of the year.

"It's left us in a bit of financial difficulty and also, a shed load of work down on what we would have been through throughout a normal summer," Jacqui said. The company has since had to look for additional work elsewhere to help plug the gap.

Like many businesses caught up in the Superbike Factory collapse, The Bike Bus had little warning that the relationship was about to come to an end. Jacqui says the company had sent Superbike Factory a letter before action after becoming increasingly concerned about the outstanding payments.

"the next day, the news [of the administration] was announced," she said.

The Bike Bus subsequently contacted the administrators, KR8 Advisory, and completed the forms it was sent. At the time of speaking to Visordown, however, Jacqui said she had received no further correspondence.

"We filled them in, sent them back. Heard absolutely nothing at all."

There is an important distinction between The Bike Bus and many of the customers caught up in the collapse. It doesn't have a motorcycle sitting somewhere inside the Superbike Factory estate waiting to be recovered, nor is it waiting for the return of a deposit. Its problem is more straightforward, but no less serious for a small company. It provided a service, paid its own staff, fuel bills, insurance and other costs, to deliver that service, and says it has yet to receive the money it was promised. Jacqui also says she feels somewhat removed from the wider customer crisis, despite being another casualty of the collapse.

"The customers are in a right load of trouble, you know, no bike, no money. It's a really horrible situation," she said. "But I've not heard of any other transport companies, and I'm sure there will be some, that are in our situation."

For The Bike Bus, then, the collapse has left a very practical problem, in that the money owed is still outstanding, an additional driver has been employed, and a sizeable chunk of its normal summer business disappeared almost overnight. And while the company continues to chase other work to replace what it lost, its experience offers another glimpse of the network of businesses that depended on Superbike Factory functioning normally.

The motorcycles may have been the headline part of the business, but getting those motorcycles from one place to another required a whole supply chain of smaller companies. When the money stopped moving, so did the security that those companies had built around the work.

Images: The Bike Bus/Facebook

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