Episode 40

Moving Matters with Wesley Bourne of Bournes

00:00:00
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00:50:36

February 24th, 2022

50 mins 36 secs

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About this Episode

In this episode Wesley Bourne, Managing Director of Bournes Moves discusses how he began his career at the tender age of 15, where his first payroll date was August 22nd, 1994 and became a 5th generation removal man.

Bournes was established back in 1875 by Thomas Bourne, starting as a coal merchant and general haulier. In the 1960’s brothers Eric & Roy Bourne joined the business (sons of Stanley Bourne, who was the grandson of Thomas Bourne) and took over from Stanley in 1974. In 2016 Wesley together with his brother Leon (sons of Eric) and cousin Tom (son of Roy) took over ownership of Bournes Moves. Wesley is also Chairman of the advisory board of Harmony Relocation Network, a recently appointed director at MTC Ltd and is a member of the BAR Overseas Moving Group committee.

Today Bournes Moves currently provide a variety of moving services and is operated across 4 branches (Aylesbury, Cranleigh, Tonbridge Wells, with headquarters being in Rye), employing just over 100, running approximately 30 trucks and each branch has a fully containerised warehouse.

Wesley has had a few challenges, firstly the modernisation of the business, secondly scalability to manage future growth and thirdly the succession of the company.

The one thing Wesley would like to change from his moving past was providing a home delivery service to fulfil the void that was created from losing a major contract.

Wesley’s highpoints are that he has achieved most things he set out to achieve, he was on the young driver scheme for his HGV licence, he’s proud to be involved with the BAR, being Chairman of the Harmony board, but his biggest is that his kids are old enough to know what he does for a living and think he’s cool.

Wesley would like to change the way movers appreciate their value within the industry as he believes other industry sectors do this much better.

Wesley’s advice to just starting out in the industry again (which he didn’t find out himself until he reached his thirties) is invest in yourself by undertaking training, reading books, listening to podcasts or even hiring a business coach.

In the next 5 years Wesley would like to think he is still leading Bournes Moves but that is more a question for his board, industry wise Wesley thinks we have challenging times ahead with cost increases in labour, equipment and assets, supply and capacity shortages, and even though in recent times customer have been paying more for our services demand is going to drop, lets just hope our prices don’t!

Outside of the industry, and before children, Wesley would usually be found on a golf course, but not so much these days. Weekends are family time and Wesley does manage to switch off from work, spending time with the children at their activities, walking the dog, running and gym during the week which allows for cooking and drinking wine at the weekends.

And as always we end Moving Matters with a funny moving story regarding a barb wired fence.

Enjoy!

Links to Bournes: