Traction only sub contract work

Hi. I am new to this forum I run a removals company based in gosport running 2 x 18 rigid and a 7.5. Due to the turn down in work over the winter I am looking at the possibility of getting a tractor unit for general haulage work. I would appreciate any comments or pointers as to whether this is a good or bad idea and also if anyone knows any companies who sub this work out in the Southampton and portsmouth areas I would be very grateful

Obvious path is containers from the docks. You’ll probably get better responses from the owner/driver forum tbh.

Pete :laughing: :laughing:

Does your O licence have any trailers on it?

Morning
Thanks for getting back to me. Currently we dont have any trailers on our O licence, so in the first instance we are after traction only work which i understand we are able to do as long as we use someone elses trailer which is covered by there O licence and that the trailer is not parked at our operating centre overnight. This probably wouldn’t be an issue for us as our guys all do overnights now. I appreciate that this will reduce the available work, however, last time i made a major change on our O licence it took the best part of 4 months, so i will apply again, but in the meantime am keen to get going

Once you have hooked up to the trailer you are operating it for hire and reward(unless working for Maritime etc where reward is unlikely). But you need to have a trailer on your license.

SeldomSeenKid:
Once you have hooked up to the trailer you are operating it for hire and reward(unless working for Maritime etc where reward is unlikely). But you need to have a trailer on your license.

A trailer? Or a margin?

Whats the point of having trailer xyz on your o-license then pulling others.

Surely as, it will be owned, run and maintained by firm xyz it will be on there o license.

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=8515#p74535

Still traction only pulling someone elses trailer not operating it from your premises doesnt need that trailer on your license. Or have i understood something wrong.

Trailer rental/leasing is a different ballgame

Concretejim:
Still traction only pulling someone elses trailer not operating it from your premises doesnt need that trailer on your license. Or have i understood something wrong.

Trailer rental/leasing is a different ballgame

You are focusing on the ownership of the trailer and this is completely irrelevant. If the trailer is fastened to the back of your unit, in O licence terms it’s yours. It needs to be on your licence and you are responsible under law for the roadworthiness etc of the trailer, the fact that you don’t carry out the maintenence doesn’t matter, if it has a problem it’s down to you from an O licencing point of view.

Because we don’t register trailers in the UK as such we do not specify a particular trailer to your O licence, all trailers are covered by what could be seen as margin. You get a quantity of trailers added to your licence and you can use upto that number of trailers at any one time. It might sound crazy but if you set up as a freight forwarder and had 1000 trailers but no units all being pulled by subbies, you don’t need an O licence.

Related question. If I wanted to leave a stand trailer on a customers site, would I need to register that as another operating centre on my licence, or would the fact that it would get back to my operating centre on a regular basis mean I could just run it on my current licence.

For clarification I have a licence authorising two tractor units and two trailers but only specify one unit at the moment. So in theory I have a spare trailer slot I could dump at a regular customers site.