UTT will reach its 20th anniversary this year, but it really only started to make its name in the Abnormal Load market from the beginning of ‘90s.

UTT was formed in 1985 between Edward Bacon, the actual managing director, and Spanish and European partners, and initially was working principally in overseas projects – Gabon, Egypt in particular, providing specialised labour as well as cranes, special trailers, spare parts etc. from Spain, for a multinational partner.

As the Oil sector slowed down and competition overseas increased, UTT decided to concentrate on the movement of abnormal loads in Europe, in particular providing permits and escorts for non Spanish transport companies working in the Spanish and Portuguese market. Over the years, UTT has built up a good relationship with numerous French, English, Italian, Swiss, German, Dutch, Belgian and Scandinavian hauliers, providing an average of 100 permits and escorts per month except in the holiday periods.

Out of these contacts, UTT started broking abnormal loads, return loads and general transport contracting on door-to-door multimodal operations, finally offering complete packages from, say, arrival on chartered vessel at a Spanish port, arranging stevedoring, loading to truck, transport and even discharge and installation of industrial loads, transformers, gas turbines, presses, injection molding machinery, etc.

Today UTT’s turnover is more from such contracted works than permits and escorts, and UTT represents informally several major international forwarders and transport groups for typical project work in Spain.

In 1985 UTT was operated entirely by Edward Bacon as Managing director, and an assistant, Cristina Llacer, but over the years this specialised firm has increased to 6 staff in the offices and several external Escort cars with driver based out of Barcelona and in Irún. Portugal is covered by two independent agents in Lisbon, but escorts for Portugal are normally provided from Spain, unless the move is very local.

An important aspect of the operations provided by UTT is that the employees are all multilingual. The employee who speaks less than 4 languages is in a minority! Needless to say, this increases enormously the attraction of UTT to their many European clients who always prefer to discuss their transport problems in Spain in their own language. Actually UTT is handling as many as 15 abnormal load transport enquiries per day and has a high “hit rate”.

Recently UTT reorganised its internal shareholding such that the managing director, Edward Bacon now holds 47.5%, ALG Group 30% and Cristina Llacer 22.5%. The entry of ALG Group into UTT has opened up many possibilities for both UTT and ALG’s partners. ALG has operation offices in major Spanish ports and industrial/administrative centres, as well as at some borders, and also in Oporto & Lisbon offering all shipping, forwarding and general transport services.

UTT provides to the group the know-how and experience of all matters concerning abnormal load handling, contracting and supervision.

Over the last years, UTT has seen a very steady increase in turnover, which has increased tripled in the last 6 years with reasonable profits to match. Part of this expansion has been due to the increased service field now covered by the services of partner ALG Group.

The main office of UTT was moved to Via Laietana 33, 9th Floor (Barcelona) in 1996 and very recently the ALG Group and UTT have refurbished their offices to enjoy better working conditions and operating relationships.

For further information see: www.utt-spain.com / www.alggrupo.com / www.heavyliftgroup.com