Steve Jordan talks to Torben Taggaard about his trunking service from the chill of Scandinavia to the warmth of sunny Spain.
Torben Taggaard has been in the moving business for 40 years. Unlike many business owners, his aim was not to build a business of ever-increasing size. For most of his career, Torben ran his own truck and did the packing and loading himself. But then fate took a hand which forced him to change direction.
Seven years ago, perhaps unsurprisingly, he developed a back problem. He realised he could no longer do so much of the heavy work himself. So he made a logical (if perhaps unusual) decision to focus more on long-distance work. “I thought by doing longer distances I would put my body under less strain because I would be loading and unloading once a week rather than once a day.” Makes sense! And it worked – up to a point.
Torben recognised that there was a buoyant market between Denmark, southern France and Spain. The transition was successful for him. But when his back problem worsened, he had another decision to make. “I had to either give up the business completely or expand. I decided to become the biggest company providing services between Scandinavia and Spain.”
He bought a second truck – an old one. “But I had to sell it immediately to buy a new one,” he said, “because the business was so successful. It was a completely different world because I had suddenly doubled my market. I was fully booked from day one.”
The business has continued to do well. Now Taggaard Movers provides services from Norway and Sweden. He collects from Oslo and Stockholm every second week. He’s also started collecting and delivering to locations on the route, specifically France, Switzerland and Luxembourg ...
Photo: Torben Taggaard.