A message from Martien van Wijngen

A few years ago, when I was 16 years old, I started my first job as a declarer at the Rotterdam Wharf. This was my first encounter with the logistic world, and it became my dream to have my own transportation company with my own trucks on the road.

Around my 30th I started off in frozen transportation. We delivered fruits and vegetables from Southern Spain and Italy to Benelux. A ride like that, would then take us up to 36 hours. The trucks drove more than 300.000 kilometers per year, of course with double the amount of employees. At that time I thought that I was a good transporter, but I was not a good entrepreneur. The amount of money that I earned back then, went straight to paying my fines. I had to keep striving. Back then, transporting frozen cargo required special skills, because the merchants needed their fruits and vegetables to be delivered on time, to get the highest market price possible.

In 1995 we decided to implement drastic changes and switch from frozen transportation to covered lorry transport: computers, inventory, canned foods, merchandise and what not. I decided to focus on Paris, a city with about 14 million inhabitants and with similar laws to The Netherlands. Thanks to the shipping agents I knew back then, I was able to fill up the 5 trucks that I owned very quickly. And so it continues, one thing following the other, and this was how we grew from having 5 combinations in 1995 to having 100 now. The French are always contacting Van Wijngen because we speak French and we work with French chauffeurs who know their way around. Our fleets are traceable all over in France.

So, we add value to the supply chain and still maintain an honest price. This is how we are exclusive and how we contribute to the Dutch economy.

Martien van Wijngen