Experience and reliability very much to the fore at Rice Recovery
04/11/2024
Operating out of Pembroke, Co Carlow, Rice Recovery Ltd is a trusted and reliable transport and recovery company which serves both industry and the general public. Irish Trucker touched base with Barry Hayden to learn all about this thriving business in the south east – from its roots to the superb fleet that it operates with at the moment.
Business is good these days at Rice Recovery and the plan for owner and founder Tom Rice and the rest of the team in Pembroke is to keep things that way for the foreseeable future.
Established as a limited company last year, the roots of the business date back more than a decade ago to a time when Tom was getting his now nationwide 24/7 service off the ground.
Right now, Rice Recovery employs 10 staff from its base in Pembroke, with Tom’s daughter Chloe and his partner Stacey both playing essential roles within business.
Also paramount to the process is Tom’s right hand man Barry Hayden who took some time recently to fill Irish Trucker in on the details of a thriving business which currently operates with 20 vehicles in its fleet.
“Mainly what we do here is the insurance breakdown assistance. As you know yourself, nearly every insurance policy comes with breakdown assistance and that’s our main thing here,” he outlined.
“We also do accidents, fuel drains, lockouts, so basically everything that comes along with a recovery service. We’d also do a good few motorbikes as well.”
At Rice Recovery, the team are able to transport all sizes of vehicle from a bike to a camper van and also offer customers an indoor and outdoor storage facility that is protected 24/7 by Netwatch CCTV remote monitoring.
The full breakdown of services in which the company provides customers is as follows; Vehicle Transport, Breakdown Recovery, Wrong Fuel Assistance, International Transport, Crew Cab Trucks and Covered Transport, Bike Transport, Insurance Approved, Accident Recovery, Crane Recovery and Specialised Recovery.
To that end, it’s no surprise at all to hear that business is flourishing at the moment for a company which offers its clientele such a vast range of services.
“We’re very busy and, like everyone else, trying to get drivers is really the biggest issue for us at the moment here,” Barry stated.
“We’re gone to the stage now where we’re turning down work simply because we don’t have the number of drivers to get around to everyone. It’s a problem for everyone at the moment though.”
Of course, the jobs can’t be done correct without the right vehicles on the road and the right personnel operating them.
At Rice Recovery, they have endeavoured to make sure that they have an excellent fleet at their disposal and, as well as that, experienced and reliable drivers behind the wheel.
This year has saw the company adding a couple of brand-new 7.2 tonne Iveco trucks with another one on the way, according to Barry.
“We have about 20 vehicles here and that’s between vans, jeeps, breakdown vans, motorbikes,” he said.
“There’s 18 to 20 there at the minute and we have 12 trucks. We’ve recently added a couple of new Ivecos as well, so we’ve three 241 Ivecos on the road at the minute and one that’s currently in build.
“The new ones that we picked up are going great for us. They’re only 7.2 tonners and they’re great for around town and stuff like that and handier than running the bigger trucks around doing smaller jobs.”
He added: “We tend to go with Iveco because they’re plain and simple straight out. There’s nobody else that does the 7.2 tonnes that I know of. They’re just so handy the size of them.”
Running an excellent 24-hour, 7 day a week breakdown recovery service on a nationwide basis requires top vehicles at a company’s disposal.
That said, it takes more than just the right trucks on the road to make it all work. So, all of that considered, the burning question is what has been the secret behind Rice Recovery’s success to date?
How has a small start-up grown into what is very much a thriving recovery business now operating with its staff and truck numbers in double figures?
For Barry, he cites customer service as being an essential ingredient behind the company’s continued success.
“If you look at our Google reviews, we are doing something right here,” he said. “Customer service is what it’s all about and we have a good team of staff here and we’re obviously doing something right.”
Looking at the months ahead, Barry says that Rice Recovery is very much in a good situation going forward with hopes of expanding its customer base and adding more to the fleet as well.
“Our customer base is growing every week here. We’re getting new customers and if we could get new drivers, we would absolutely take them. The work is there and we have another MAN truck being built there at the minute and, if we could get more drivers, we would take them,” he said.
“We are growing there every day and the fact that we have the waste collection permits and stuff like that also stands to us as well.
“It is hard though when we have everything right. We have all the right insurance, haulage license, everything, and then there’s lads going in undercutting you and they don’t have half of the stuff that we have.”
Rice Recovery
Unit 3 Pembroke,
Carlow Town,
Co Carlow (R93 AP23)
Tel: 059 913 4730
Email: [email protected]
First published in Irish Trucker magazine September/October 2024, Vol 27-5
