Rob Churcher – TESCO
Company: Tesco
Role: Primary Rail Development
Rob’s role is to help Tesco grow its rail network through Primary and fresh volume. Tesco Primary covers the start of our supply chain, this is collecting direct from supplier gates and delivering into our distribution centres to be sorted and moved onwards to our store. He works closely with suppliers and hauliers to divert road volume through our rail network at a financially competitive rate.
No specific degree or qualification was needed for the role Rob is currently in. The key requirements for his role were strong communication skills, team working experience with both Tesco and external colleagues and a problem-solving work ethic.
He started working for a haulier that covered jobs for Tesco straight after university and maintained a Tesco customer contract with them afterwards. This opened his eyes to the distribution world within Tesco and helped him, learn some of the ways of working here. Rob then found the actual role on the Tesco careers website.
Rob has always had a personal interest in both sustainability and logistics. Helping to develop a retailer such as Tesco’s rail network and encouraging suppliers to move from trucks to trains seemed like the perfect opportunity to combine these passions. At University, Rob studied international business, quite a broad degree, a few modules were based on operations and supply chain, but we covered a vast curriculum. He realised he was more suited to a logistics role during his placement year.
“I feel being immersed in the day-to-day fast paced business quickly taught me more than my first two years at university combined, learning the start to end, day to day operation of an off-grid LPG and heating oil delivery company! It was almost a trial and error for me, and I stumbled onto the truck planning side and felt I could connect routes as though it was a puzzle and got a buzz from it.”
Rob’s favourite things about his role can be split into two. Firstly, there is a job satisfaction that comes with growing the rail network. Every truck we can take off the road reduces our supply chains road miles and in turn is a step in the right direction to help counter climate change.
The second is that his role can be quite a creative. You are provided a problem and need to find a solution. Over Christmas some of our “festive 7” veg came from Spain, this meant Spanish truck drivers would drive from the likes of Valencia all the way to Livingston and back. We managed to source a site near our rail terminal for these trucks to cross-dock onto refrigerated rail by train. This would be saving the driver over a day of driving!
Last year Tesco won the Logistics UK award for rail business of the year. This felt so rewarding after all the hard work we as a team had put in throughout the year.