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➤http://www.truckingmag.co.uk August 2019 TRUCKING 55fought in the conflict. This was in 1921,
and he operated the vehicle, together
with some trucks and coaches that later
joined it, around the village of Lavant in
West Sussex where he lived.
The trucks were kept busy by local
agricultural merchants, while the
coaches handled ‘excursions’ and school
routes. Harry Bleach also built and
operated the village garage.
Today’s ‘Mick’ Bleach was named
Michael after his father –
Lawrence! “My
grandfather was a real
original,” he says
with a smile. “He
gave my dad three
perfectly good
Christian names,
including
Lawrence, but
called him Mick so
regularly and from
such an early age
that it just caught on!
So, though my father was
never christened Mick, I was
still named Michael after him. One
positive was that for many years we
could use the same business cards!”
When ‘Mick’ (Lawrence) came home
from doing National Service in Egypt
after the end of WWII, Harry asked if he
wanted to buy back some of their trucks
that had been nationalised at the
beginning of the conflict. These trucks
soon joined the business’s coaches,
garage operation and coal round – in
which Lawrence’s brother, Tony was also
now employed.
As time moved on, Harry had less and
less involvement, as the two brothersworked long, hard
hours building the
business, delivering
freight further and
further afield. In 1955,
joining the family name and
village where it all started, the
business was ‘incorporated’ and Bleach
of Lavant Ltd was born.The die is cast
In the early ’60s the brothers split the
business, with Tony taking on the garage
and Lawrence the transport. A keen and
very accomplished sportsman, Lawrence
stopped the coaching operations to focus
on just trucks – a move which “allows me
more time for sports at the weekend”,
Lawrence is reputed to have said!
Asked how he became involved as the
company grew, today’s Mick Bleach is
disarmingly honest. “As far as I wasconcerned, in those days it was ‘in the
back garden’,” he says, “and I took every
opportunity to go out with the drivers
whenever I could.”
These days, the Bleach home is no
longer next to the yard. That moved in
1985 to larger premises in Chichester,
and later again in 2007 to Ford airfield
near Arundel, where it has space for its
fleet of over 70 trucks and 50 trailers – as
well as warehousing that it uses
primarily for the transfer of pallets. The
company had taken on responsibilities
for the local postcode area with the
Palletforce network about 10 years ago,
having been part of two other networks
in earlier years.
However, it was the long-standing
agricultural work – they still work for
one of those earliest customers – that
was to propel Bleach of Lavant into its
core area of strength and expertise today.
“We moved into the horticultural sector
some 40 years back,” recalls Mick. “With
our background it seemed a natural step,
and was made even easier when we took
on the work of a haulier who had been
providing transport for local growers.
The South Coast is a very fertile area
with good growing conditions for
seedlings and plants, horticultural
demand was booming and we did well to
get involved all those years ago.”
The business has not really looked
back. The haulier whose work they took
on had been running salads and flowers
overnight from local growers to the
London markets. Five years into this
work, Bleach of Lavant also acquired its
major competitor in the sector. As well as
the additional London markets’ work,
this business had a contract with Fargro,
a large cooperative supplying theThe Bleach fleet comprises 49
DAF rigids and 24 DAF tractors;
10 of them acquired in 2019The kids are alright! Mick
Bleach flanked by sons Ben
(left) and George