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Freight crime and haulage: Direct Connect’s Rhys Hackling

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Freight crime and haulage: Direct Connect's Rhys Hackling

Rhys Hackling started Direct Connect Logistics with two 7.5-tonne lorries and no customers of his own. The Bicester haulier now runs 24 vehicles, including 18-tonne HGVs.

In January 2022 thieves stole pallets of batteries from one of its trucks, a case Rachel Taylor MP cited when she opened a Westminster Hall debate on freight crime in December 2024. He tells Business Matters what it takes to keep a fleet earning.

What do you currently do at Direct Connect Logistics?

I own and run the business. Most days come down to one question: where is each lorry going next, and what is on it?

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An empty lorry is money going out of the door. We run 24 vehicles across Bicester, Northampton and Knutsford, including a growing number of larger 18-tonne lorries, moving thousands of loads a month. Every one of them needs to earn.

Around 95 per cent of our work comes through Haulage Exchange, the online freight exchange where hauliers and businesses post loads. People sometimes ask whether that is a risk. I do not see it that way. The work comes from hundreds of different businesses, so no single customer can make or break us.

Away from the yard, I campaign on freight crime. In January 2022, thieves attacked one of our trucks and took pallets of batteries. The lorry was off the road for three days and the load was gone. I have taken the issue to Westminster, because no operator is immune, and people who run haulage firms need to be part of that conversation.

What was the inspiration behind your business?

I started out in air conditioning, not haulage. Then I briefly took over a haulage company, and what struck me was how underused the lorries were. Vehicles would drop a load and come back empty, or sit in the yard waiting for work.

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Around then I came across the exchange. Hauliers and businesses post loads there, so you can see what work is out there and where it is going. I realised the problem was not a lack of work. It was finding the right load for the right truck at the right time.

So I set up Direct Connect Logistics with two 7.5-tonne lorries, no work lined up and no customers of my own. The plan was to run everything through the platform and keep those two trucks full. It worked, and that gave me the confidence to grow.

Who do you admire?

I admire the drivers. From day one, looking after our drivers has mattered to me as much as looking after our customers. They are out on the road at all hours, often with nowhere safe to stop, and they carry the reputation of the business with every delivery. When a customer tells me a job was done well, that is down to them.

I also respect anyone who has built a haulage firm. The margins are thin, the hours are long, and nobody hands you anything.

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Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently?

I would have spoken up about freight crime sooner. Like a lot of operators, I saw theft as something that happened to other people, or just a cost of doing business. Then we lost a full load of batteries and had a lorry off the road for three days. For a smaller firm, one hit like that can wipe out a month’s profit.

It is not a small problem. The National Vehicle Crime Intelligence Service recorded 3,424 cargo crimes against lorries in 2025, nine a day, with an estimated £65.1m of goods taken at cost price, and the police officers who track it think the real figure is several times higher.

I realised that if people running haulage businesses do not make the case, nobody else will. That is what took me to Westminster. I wish I had started that conversation before it happened to us.

What defines your way of doing business?

Growing carefully. I only expanded when the business could handle it. Two trucks became four, four became six, six became 12, and now we run 24. Each step was based on what we could see in the work coming through, not guesswork. Before we added any 18-tonne lorries, we had already found customers looking for that capacity.

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Cash flow is part of growing carefully. In haulage, getting paid matters as much as winning the work, so we keep invoicing and payments in one system and spend less time chasing money.

This year we were named Company of the Year by Haulage Exchange. For a business built one truck at a time, that meant a lot to everyone, from the drivers to the office.

Reputation matters as much as growth. I will not hand work to a subcontractor I cannot check. Before anyone gets near a load of ours, I want to see their licence, insurance and trading status. Freight crime is organised and deliberate, and some of it happens without anyone breaking into anything. Being careful about who you work with is part of running a responsible business.

Customers notice that. They want to know the job will be done properly, first time. Over the years that has earned us more than 6,100 positive reviews, and plenty of customers now come straight to us before looking anywhere else.

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What advice would you give to someone starting out?

Do not wait to win your own customers before you start moving freight. I ran our first two trucks entirely on work posted by other hauliers and businesses, planning each return journey so the lorry did not come home empty. The direct relationships came later, from doing those jobs well.

Then set up the back office properly while you are still small. Paperwork that feels manageable with two trucks will swallow your week by the time you have 10.

Grow at the pace the work allows. Only add a vehicle when you can already see the demand for it. Borrowing ahead of the work is how good operators get into trouble.

Above all, protect your reputation. In this industry, like most, word travels fast, and a good name brings the work back.

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Wall Street opens higher amid sliding oil prices, rebounds after mixed week

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Why This AI Bottleneck Means Ciena Stock Has 58% Upside

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Why This AI Bottleneck Means Ciena Stock Has 58% Upside

Why This AI Bottleneck Means Ciena Stock Has 58% Upside

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Raymond James Names 3 Top Industrial Stocks In New Analyst Favorites List

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Oracle’s Co-CEOs Deliver Explosive Growth, but Stock Plunges 50% in Their First Year

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Oracle’s Co-CEOs Deliver Explosive Growth, but Stock Plunges 50% in Their First Year

Quick Read

  • Oracle stock plunged 50% despite co-CEOs delivering a $664 billion contract backlog and 121% cloud infrastructure revenue growth in one year.

  • Q1 capex hit $28.5 billion with free cash flow negative $5.4 billion, as FY27 spending guidance reaches $90 to $95 billion.

  • Wall Street remains 82% bullish with a $238 consensus target, and we award the co-CEOs a B+ for operational execution in year one.

  • Just released. Our analysts combed the entire stock market and named the ten best stocks to buy right now, and Oracle didn’t make the cut. Enter your email to see the names that beat ORCL. The report is free. Enter your email and see if any of your stocks made the cut.

One year into the most recent co-CEO era at Oracle (NYSE:ORCL), the stock is down 50.2% over the trailing 12 months, with a 52-week range that has swung from a high of $329.50 to a low of $114.50. Shares changed hands around $148.99 in Monday’s premarket.

Several modern, curved glass buildings with blue reflective exteriors against a clear blue sky. The word 'ORACLE' is prominently displayed in white capital letters on the upper part of one of the buildings. White horizontal bands run across the glass facades, and some buildings feature distinct chevron or zigzag patterns in their design.
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Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia took over as co-CEOs near the peak. The contracted business under their leadership then grew at a pace almost nothing in enterprise software has matched. The stock went the other way. Did the business genuinely improve, or did the market simply reprice what investors will pay for growth that requires heavy capital investment?

What Changed Under the New Chiefs

Remaining performance obligations, essentially the dollar value of signed contracts not yet recognized as revenue, ended Q1 FY2027 at $664 billion, a $209 billion year-over-year increase. Cloud infrastructure revenue grew 121%, and Oracle booked more than $30 billion in new AI cloud contracts in a single quarter.

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The operational execution has real substance. Oracle delivered 850 megawatts and more than 300,000 GPUs since Q4, with utilization at 97.9% and renewals coming in at a 20% premium. Total revenue reached $19.34 billion, up 29.6%, versus the $14.93 billion posted in the quarter the handover happened. Co-CEO Magouyrk said, “We are delivering data center and GPU capacity at a pace that would have seemed impossible only a year ago.”

The multicloud pact with Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) Azure, Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) AWS, and Google is the strategic pivot. Multi-cloud database revenue grew 353% year over year. The GPU muscle comes from Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA), whose Vera Rubin systems ship to Oracle customers in Q2. (The power, cooling, and networking suppliers riding the same buildout are the subject of a free report on seven non-chipmaker AI infrastructure names.)

Where the Skeptic Case Lives

Capital intensity is the whole bear case. Q1 capex hit $28.5 billion, free cash flow was negative $5.4 billion, and management guided FY27 capex to $90 billion to $95 billion. Oracle completed a $20 billion at-the-market equity issuance, and interest expense rose 55% to $1.4 billion. CFO Hilary Maxson has flagged a roughly five-percentage-point full-year gross margin decline for fiscal 2026.

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The earnings optics deserve scrutiny. FY26 EPS of $7.63 flatters against FY27 guidance of $8.10, but Q2 FY26’s $2.26 EPS included a $2.7 billion Ampere divestiture gain. The remaining performance obligations figure is only as good as the customers behind it, and cash goes out years before revenue arrives.

Verdict: Year One Grade

Grade: B+. The co-CEOs inherited businesses they already ran and delivered a scale test with numbers that back the story. Worth watching over the next 12 months is whether operating cash flow of $23.1 billion continues to outpace net cash capex, which management estimates at no more than $70 billion for the year. Wall Street is with them: 82% bullish and a $237.97 consensus price target. Now the co-CEOs need to prove it.

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Contact editorial@247wallst.com for any questions or corrections.

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US Stock Market Today | Live: US stock futures climb as AI shares rally and crude prices ease

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US Stock Market Today | Live: US stock futures climb as AI shares rally and crude prices ease

Warnings from executives at leading AI companies triggered a selloff last week, but concerns eased on Monday as investors focused on signs that spending on AI development continued to grow.

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Bristol Airport’s new chief executive to shape transport hub’s ‘ambitious future’

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She is taking over from Dave Lees who is stepping down at the end of the year

Charley Maher is the new CEO of Bristol Airport

Charley Maher is the new CEO of Bristol Airport(Image: Bristol Airport)

Bristol Airport has appointed a new chief executive as it continues to push for further expansion. Charley Maher will take over from current boss Dave Lees who has been at the helm of the transport hub since 2018 and will be stepping down at the end of the year.

Ms Maher is currently group chief executive of South Staffordshire Group, a regulated water and infrastructure services group, and has spent her career working in the travel, financial services and utilities sectors.

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She held senior leadership roles with NatWest and Wessex Water/YTL Group before joining South Staffordshire as its top boss in 2023.

Jason Holt, chair of Bristol Airport, said the appointment followed an “extensive and highly competitive selection process”.

“Charley brings extensive experience of delivering long-term infrastructure investment, successful customer delivery, and the balancing of commercial performance with environmental and social responsibilities,” he said.

Under Mr Lees’ leadership, Bristol Airport has seen an unprecedented growth in passenger numbers and the delivery of a number of major projects, including a new public transport interchange as well as the positive outcome of a planning application to increase passengers to 12 million a year.

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The airport, which became majority-owned by Macquarie Asset Management last year, now employs more than 5,800 people and supports thousands more jobs through the wider supply chain. It is currently undergoing a £400m upgrade and is seeking further expansion – to 15 million passengers a year – a move it says will create an extra 1,000 new jobs while increasing long-haul connectivity to global markets.

Ms Maher said: “I am genuinely excited to be joining Bristol Airport at such an important and ambitious stage in its journey. Having grown up, lived and worked in North Somerset and Bristol for many years, it is a real privilege to be appointed to such a key role that sits at the heart of the region I call home.

“The airport plays an important part in connecting people, supporting businesses and helping our communities thrive, and I’m looking forward to working with the team, partners and stakeholders to build on the fantastic work already achieved, and to help shape an ambitious and sustainable future.”

Mr Lees said it had been “the highlight of my career” to lead the team at Bristol Airport.

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“Together we have delivered significant improvements for our customers, airlines and the community which we are proud to serve, including our industry leading position on our pathway to deliver net zero Airport operations by 2030,” he added.

Bristol Airport is England’s third-largest regional airport, with more than 10.8 million passengers passing through the terminal over the past 12 months and links to more than 120 destinations in 34 countries.

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Stock Market Today: Dow Rallies 450 Points As Oil Prices, Treasury Yields Fall; Nvidia Extends Gains

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Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average and other major stock indexes rallied Monday as oil prices and Treasury yields dropped. Meanwhile, Nvidia (NVDA) was an early winner on the stock market today. Ahead of Monday’s open, Dow futures climbed 0.9%, or around 450 points, as S&P 500 futures gained 0.7%. Nasdaq-100 futures advanced 1.1% in early morning trading. West…

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Airbus to transform former super-jumbo A380 factory to create hundreds of Broughton job

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Across the Broughton site, the manufacturer is creating around 480 new well paid jobs this year.

Airbus is accelerating its global industrial strategy, investing £150m into converting its former A380 wing production facility into an A321 line in Broughton

Airbus is investing £150m into converting its former A380 wing production facility into an A321 line in Broughton in North Wales.

The west factory was opened in 2003, and at the time was the largest factory built in the UK for years.

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The Flintshire plant – with more than 1,000 workers – had been used to assemble wings for the 555 seater A380 before they were transported by barge and ship to Toulouse in France.

A decision was taken to phase out the programme and the last wing departed Broughton in February 2020.

Now it will be transformed – with work set to be completed by the end of the year .The expansion is a significant boost for the UK aerospace industry capability.

Once completed, the facility will host six wing production jigs, an equipping line and paint shop, specifically designed to feed the backlog of around 7,500 A320 Family aircraft, of which around 70% are A321s.

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Across the Broughton site, the manufacturer is creating around 480 new well paid jobs in 2026, including 250 positions in the refurbished factory.

These roles join the 6,000 strong workforce in Broughton, signalling Airbus’ long-term commitment to Wales and reinforcing the UK’s position as a critical hub in the global aerospace industry.

At the heart of this investment is a new, advanced manufacturing environment, designed and built with direct involvement from operators across the site.

Employees fed into the ergonomics and technology integration to shape the industrial system.

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Jerome Blandin, head of Airbus Wing, said: “We aren’t just talking about a ramp-up; we’re putting the infrastructure in place to support it.

“Around the world today, an A320 Family aircraft takes off or lands every two seconds, with wings designed and built in the UK. Investing in our capacity strengthens our industrial footprint, creates high value jobs that support the wider UK aerospace sector and ensures we remain competitive in the years to come.

“This investment is important for jobs, important for the region and important for our global ramp up towards rate 75.”

The first wing is already underway, with all jigs expected to be operational by the end of the year.

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This latest investment builds on the recently announced multi-million pound investment in Airbus’ Belfast facility, which will expand the wing manufacturing footprint and advanced composite capabilities to support A220 ramp-up.

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Cool strong robot lift dumbbells

This article was written by

Monte Independent Investment Research: Michael Del Monte is a buy-side equity analyst with expertise in the technology, energy, industrials, and materials sectors. Prior to working in the investment management industry, Michael spent over a decade in professional services working across industries that include O&G, OFS, Midstream, Industrials, Information Technology, EPC Services, and consumer discretionary.

Analyst’s Disclosure: I/we have a beneficial long position in the shares of DELL either through stock ownership, options, or other derivatives. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

Seeking Alpha’s Disclosure: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. Any views or opinions expressed above may not reflect those of Seeking Alpha as a whole. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank. Our analysts are third party authors that include both professional investors and individual investors who may not be licensed or certified by any institute or regulatory body.

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