Focusing on specialisation has been instrumental in establishing Monaghan Freight as a global player. Despite its seemingly modest setup in Tempo with ten lorries and 18 staff members, the company has become a major force in the global freight market.

Founded nearly a decade ago in May 2014 by Managing Director Stephen Monaghan (37) and his father, Dermot, the company has transformed from its humble origins to achieve an annual turnover of £4.8 million, with the Managing Director expressing confidence in its continued growth.

Explaining how the business came about, Mr. Monaghan said: “My dad came from a construction background but I had got into haulage in 2008 working for a company in Omagh “I started doing a bit of freight forward, paperwork on the side and it transitioned to going out on our own.”

Mr. Monaghan admits when he started the market was “very” saturated but instead the company saw that specialisation in large loads could set them apart.

“I wanted to follow the path to be more specialised, we do a lot of oversized loads, factory relocations, project forward, anything wild or wonderful, awkward cargo.

“We do a lot of modular home building, large classrooms that are made up of four or five large sections. We do the likes of boats, large silos, and air handling units for data centres.

"We do a lot of project cargo, we work for MAN in Germany that manufactures large and we do work for Siemens as well.”

With over 900 customers on their books, the company prefer variety explained, Mr. Monaghan.

“A lot of our customers have their project here or project there, we don't focus on one market, every week is different cargo, and the guys deal with different loads, different routes “We do a lot of planning, ranging from accounts to planning to customs and we have an office in Heathrow that looks after our global shipping.”

The global outreach takes loads to all continents and every corner of the globe, but it is not a Monaghan Freight lorry you will see driving the roads in America, Australia, India, or Europe but one of their partner organisations as part of the freight forwarding networks they are part of.

“We are a locally connected company with a global outreach”, Mr. Monaghan said.

“We are part of project networks and there is only one member for each country in the network, we represent Ireland and through the other members, we are able to create end-to-end solutions for the client.

We have ten lorries, we have twenty of our own trailers and we ship a lot of cargo out, for example, we will bring it to port in Liverpool and then ship it from Liverpool to Baltimore in the US and we have an American haulier who’ll bring it for the final mile delivery.

“Freight Forward is a big part of it, you can't have stuff everywhere so we have good connections everywhere."

Explaining how the process works, he explained: “If a client contacts us and wants cargo moved from Belfast to Mumbai, our own fleet brings it to the port and when it arrives at Mumbai port, our contact in India will do the final mile delivery.

Reflecting on the business which has had to weather storms such as Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic, Mr. Monaghan said: “We have really found our markets and our flow.

“When we started in 2014 it was a hard economic time, Brexit, Covid, but in honesty, we had to readjust around it.

“Between all of us we are working to create new business and working to develop our existing customers.”

Describing himself as ‘hungry’ to develop new and existing customers he added: “ “Working with manufacturers for example, if we are moving finished products for them, we try and get in the door with them and ask how do we get into bringing your components or things you need, to create an end to end solution”.

There is a sense in speaking to Mr. Monaghan that the company know what customers want and that is part of their success: “The big blue chip Companies [most reliable and valuable companies on the market] want to lift the phone, ring Monaghan Freight, they don't care about complexities, they want a budgetary price, readiness date and a delivery date.”

He adds that customers enjoy having a single point of contact and this is something the company pride itself in especially as they search for more business: “We focus on having as many different customers as we can and I am always hungry for new customers, Even in quiet times, we have a good vast array of companies.”

Looking to the future, while keen to expand, they want to be clear from the outset that they are big players in the world of big cargo: "What we are trying to develop is our brand, our tagline is think big, move bigger and we are now very into marketing and social media and want to emphasise what we do.”