City Link, now ranked second in the UK market after completing its acquisition of Target Express in December, is to keep both companies’ hubs in place as it merges the businesses.

"Rather than having a ’superhub’ at Wednesbury, we will keep Target’s Coventry base as a southern hub covering 40 depots.

That’s given us a good few years’ capacity, " City Link MD Michael Cooke told IFW.

Most of the 108 depots in the combined network are generating enough volume to send dedicated nightly trailers to each hub, according to destination depot. "I don’t want to see a shuttle between Wednesbury and Coventry, " Cooke said.

The City Link brand has been rolled out through May across the full fleet of 350 linehaul trailers and 4,000 collection and delivery vehicles. Later this year, the company is investing in 140 double-decker, solid-sided trailers and 7,000 new wheeled cages.

Target operated with curtainsiders and forklift trucks, but some of these are being kept to handle non-cageable items. Target had built some overnight pallet business, for example, which is a new segment to City Link.

"We’re tapping into Target business that they had been nurturing for some time, though the company was still very much a niche player, " said Cooke.

A single operating system is promised by 23 July, bringing former Target customers track and trace functionality for the first time. C&D drivers will be equipped with handheld terminals by October, allowing signatures to be scanned and POD information to appear on City Link’s system in real time.

New for Target customers is a next-day 7.30am product for urgent documents and spare parts - "a premium product we’ve had for a long time, " said Cooke.

Conversely, acquiring Target has brought City Link same-day capability. "We were not geared to same-day except for rectification." Not all the depots are likely to survive the merger. "There will be some rationalisation going forward and we will complete the process in 2008, " said Cooke.

He did not venture a view on consolidation in the UK parcel sector, following Lynx’s amalgamation into UPS and FedEx’s acquisition of ANC.

"We’re a bit of that ourselves, aren’t we? But I’m not into cheap and cheerful. Target and ourselves have both usually been in the upper quartile on delivery performance and have both demonstrated quality of service. I don’t want to dilute what we’re offering customers."