History
In December 1988 Leo, Gerrie and Robert Plune founded Legero Courier Services. Three brothers with one and the same dream to built their own company. With a single rental truck, a small room at the founder’s residence and a ‘No problem attitude’ a forwarding company came to life.
Around-the-clock availability, dedication and high quality service quickly resulted in rapid growth. Within 2 years Legero became a well-known company in the port of Rotterdam respected by both customers as well as the competition. The small room was soon exchanged for an industrial building with a ‘real’ office and storage facilities. The rental truck was now owned and the fleet of trucks expanded to twenty.
As a result of the excellent services provided, the very competitive rates and the punctual deliveries, many local ship handlers started hiring Legero for delivery of their spares and stores to vessels within the European ports. Trough the years that followed Legero developed as specialists in this particular field and regular A to B deliveries remained hardly ever the case. By now 90% of the customers where active in the shipping industry: ship chandlers, technical supply companies, yards, workshops and ship’s agents.
Frequently visiting the vessels themselves, the founders easily made contact with the superintendents and port captains on board. By their request Legero started working for ship owners and managers directly and it was soon decided to change the name into Legero International (Holland) BV.
To increase flexibility and expand our specialization, an application for a special arrangement was filed with the local customs, the so-called bonded warehouse type Csum. Examinations by various authorities lead to this application to be granted in 1991 and we became one of the first forwarding companies in Rotterdam having an independent operating bonded warehouse, authorized to receive and dispatch bonded shipments without any interference of the local customs. Consignment, both bonded and free could be stored in the same warehouse and were available to the clients 24 hours a day, 7 day’s a week.
Meanwhile due to the continuously increasing demands for air and sea freight all necessary arrangement where made to provide this services. Specialists in this particular line of business were hired and staff was trained.
Adding air & sea freight services made no exception to our company policy. In contradiction to our competitors, orders are not distributed to the various departments but arranged by the appointed account team. This improves flexibility and prevents the client from being transferred between various departments in order to retrieve information or provide instructions.
To distinguish our selves even further and provide value added services towards our clients, investments were made and we started the development of our in-house Legero software system which included an online ‘stock report’. This system provides round-the-clock information to our clients.
Today, twenty years after the establishment of our company we have offices and warehouse facilities in Rotterdam, Athens, Hamburg, Houston and Singapore, a fleet of trucks, own barges, hub locations on all the continents and a sophisticated network of worldwide agents. Business plans are being developed for future expansions into Scandinavia, Dubai, Hong Kong as well as China.
A lot has changed. Except one thing; the ‘No problem attitude’. It’s still there.
