2024-02-29 15:35:00
HAS Rennes, when you want to get rid of your bulky items, you can make an appointment online and drop off your wardrobe outside your home at the appointed time. If the curious local resident waits until the metropolitan services arrive, he or she may be surprised to see a trailer towed by a bicycle arrive. The cyclist does not need help: a ramp allows the bulky waste to be hoisted up. The electrical assistance then gives the necessary boost to take the cabinet to the recycling center.
It’s not really a revolution. These bicycle conveyors no longer surprise many people in the Ille-et-Vilaine prefecture. Since 2012, a company has been working to replace delivery vans in the city. The group of founders had already been cycling for three years.
“One of them had seen moving done by bicycle during his studies in Canada. He wanted to do the same thing when he returned to Brittany,” explains one of the co-managers, François Dupont. A political commitment? Not for him in any case: “I came to cyclologistics by chance. I was working in another field and when I arrived in Rennes, I started work with a truck logistician. In 2019, I saw an ad for All by bike, and it was rather the cooperative world that attracted me. »
“Development driven by territorial actors”
The Rennes company is in fact a SCOP, a cooperative and participatory company. The employees are the owners if they wish. “External partners are possible, but not more than 35% and no partner can hold more than 49% of the company’s shares,” explains the co-manager. But anyway, the voting rule is one person, one vote. »
READ ALSO Toulouse – Welcome to the Vélo ValléeThe profits are thus shared each year into three parts. An irreducible part (17.5%), which serves as a reserve and investment, a “work” part, blocked on an account for five years for all employees, and a “dividends” part, which remunerate the partners. An activity report is presented to employees every week and François Dupont leads a meeting every two months to discuss financial strategy and human resources.
From 2015, the objective of the small Rennes structure is of interest beyond its territory. Free Everything by Bike franchise businesses are being created in Rouen (Seine-Maritime) and Grenoble (Isère). “Logistics is a field with characteristics specific to each territory,” we explain to Tout en vélo. It therefore seems obvious that development is driven by territorial actors. »
This means that no entry fee or percentage of turnover is required. The only obligation: deliver by bike. The network today includes fourteen cooperatives from Marseille (Bouches-du-Rhône) to Havre (Seine-Maritime), via Lyon (Rhône) or Nantes (Loire-Atlantique).
Huge room for improvement
With expansion, a resource problem is gradually emerging: cargo bikes are needed to ensure the network’s 410,000 annual deliveries. Historically, these were built in the Rennes scop. As the need increases, construction and logistics activities are separated.
In 2021, a new structure is created, still called Tout en vélo but under another legal format: the cooperative society of collective interest (Scic). “The need for bicycles was coupled with a need for network animation, for the transmission of know-how,” explains Samuel de Gentil-Baichis, co-director of Scic.
READ ALSO Why car manufacturers are keen on cyclingThree hundred bicycles leave the structure’s workshops each year, 40% controlled by the Tout en vélo SCOPs, 30% by employees and 30% by local partners. But the fourteen companies in the network represent only 20% of sales. “Most of the cyclists in France work with us,” explains Samuel de Gentil-Baichis. According to Ademe, the sector had 180 to 200 companies in 2023.
“This represents 2,200 to 2,400 full-time equivalents,” adds Margherita Alessandrini, head of the cyclocargology program, for the Les Boîtes à Vélo association. “The challenge is to find economic balance in this sector, which today requires 28 positions per million euros of turnover. This is twice as much as the average for a French company. » For this sector observer, cyclologistics has enormous room for improvement. To transport everything that can be done with calf strength, it would take 110,000 full-time equivalents.
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