We have rebranded our removals lorries! Have you spotted one of our new red trucks yet?
In 2019 we made a big decision to change the design of our vehicles and now there are a few out there on the road we thought we'd tell you all a little bit about why.
History of Bournes removals lorries
Bournes started out in 1875 using horse and cart to conduct our business. By the middle to late twentieth century, our vehicles were well recognised in the local area with their distinctive yellow/beige colours.
We grew our business in the 70s and 80s and expanded services to offer removals to Europe as well as continuing local removal services in South East England. In 1993 this led to us becoming a founding member of UTS - a European network of independently owned removal companies that joined together to offer seamless removals services across Europe, sharing knowledge and resources.
As part of this new network, we were able to secure some large contracts alongside our business serving private customers. We were proud to serve the Ministry of Defence for many years, moving its military personnel throughout Europe. This required us to establish a large inter-modal vehicle fleet and saw the emergence of our large draw-bar lorries and trailers.
One rule of the new network was shared branding. This meant our well known yellow lorries were replaced with striking white vehicle bodies with black and red logos. This design evolved with the modernisation of the UniGroup UTS brand over the next 25 years with the addition of red arrows at the rear of the vehicle and our updated logos.
We loved the smart look of these vehicles over the years, but when our global network decided members could adopt their own vehicle branding recently we took the opportunity to have a rethink.
What was wrong with the old vehicle branding?
We had started to feel like our vehicles didn't quite look or feel like the rest of our branding, including our website, our brochures, our uniforms etc. We wanted all our branding to become more connected to help customers identify our company.
We also recognised that we didn't shout very well about what we do on our vehicles, which are essentially giant moving billboards!. The huge brand change to UTS in the early 90's and growth of this new Corporate European market left a lot of our previous customers confused, wondering if we still did local household moving for private customers (we do!).
We had lost our identity a little as a local mover, a service which we are passionate about and still makes up the largest part of our business today.
We wanted our vehicles and all our branding to help customers identify not only who we are, but what we do and how we can help them.
designing the new look
Our hopes for the new trucks were:
- To match the rest of our branding
- To better highlight what we do
- To reflect the quality of service we provide and demand in all areas of our business. The vehicles needed to look smart and professional. Our employees should be proud to drive them and our customers proud to have them parked outside their home on moving day.
We hope what we came up with achieves that!
Over the next few years our white lorries will be replaced with the new red design. We won't be spraying them all right away because we operate a sustainable vehicle replacement programme which means that re-sprays or new purchases only occur when they need to. This reduces waste and our impact on the environment. This means you'll slowly start to see more of the new fleet out and about, and we will continue to keep our white fleet in great condition while we wait.
Our crews take great personal pride in their vehicles and in looking after them. The new paint is higher quality than we were able to use in the past and shows off much better how hard they work to keep the vehicles clean and tidy.
We hope you like the new look as much as we do! If you spot one of the new red trucks out and about give us a wave!
