A very french bebacle

Hi all we through life we all have always something to moan about work and its related problems not only in ordinary life but especially in the transport related world , having run an International transport company for some 40 years and now handed all over to my two capable sons to carry on the business you are still within earshot of what is going on day to day.
Now on last nights news we are hearing stories of trees being laid across the approach roads in to Calais for the sole purpose of allowing illegal immigrants to board trucks heading for England.
Now the French during all my time involved with them have been noted for there Gallic attitude and in the past I have to say from a distance I have admired them for sticking together in there beliefs even though it has cost our company financially, pity our farmers do not take notice of what can be done by this sticking together thing, short term loss, long term gain.
The French even though what is happening on these roads is nothing short of madness choose to turn a blind eye to what is going on here, they are doing little to deter this. To my mind they should just shoot the perpetrators on sight no question for they are modern day ■■■■ Turpin’s out for personal financial gain.
Now my idea would be to round up all these immigrants and fly them back to whence they came this would be far less expensive in the long run and would solve the problem both of them being there and the bandits who are profiteering from them.

Now on to my next subject which is a recently introduced law by the French which makes us as a company prove that we are paying our drivers the minimum wage or above in UK law, now what the hell that is to do with them beggars belief but folks this is happening right now and of course if you do not comply you face massive fines and once paid you will never see a refund even if you prove you have complied.
My wife is the one trying to sort this out and of course we have to use an agent in France to do this whom we have to pay for there services and before any one says just write a letter for the drivers to carry as you do if they have had holiday relief this is not sufficient as they want to see bank payroll evidence that you comply, this is a very personal invasion of privacy and should not be allowed under the data protection act but we are talking about the French here.
As a company one of the rare UK ones still plying our trade in Europe we are having these restrictions forced on us with no governmental interception, maybe that is because we are not important enough and as any one travelling about this land of ours will know that most of the trucks today are not British and a lot do internal work here as well.
Now im’e sure some will jump up and say we should have stayed in the EU then we would not have these laws Imposed on us but as a company Brexit is proving to be a good omen for us, like many manufacturing companies they have seen renewed interest as the pound weakened and we have regained some long term work that we had lost because we have all of a sudden become more cost effective once more.
Now it would be very interested to see if any other International operators are having the same problems that we are encountering on this subject so look forward to hearing what’s to be done after all we must be the laughing stock for our lax attitudes over here and perhaps we should follow suit and start getting tough on them when they visit our shores and that’s it run out steam, cheers Buzzer.

PS. In todays world it is not easy to get drivers to do the job let alone good ones who know what they are doing and if you do get one you have to pay a decent wage or they will soon disappear.

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Evening Buzzer.

How the hell are they getting away with that stroke? As you rightly say that is pure interferience in the running of a private concern. Perhaps we should be asking the same question of the army of east European operators flooding our country?

I really feel for you and your family having to put up with that.

David

Evening all,

Pain in the bum it is…but the idea is a sound one, and one that the political class, and the “no hoping” civil service could well utilise here…(.but they will not, because they do not understand the simple basic problem of the precious single market)…

Everything wage wise rushes to the bottom…

French haulage in particular has been hit by low cost operations from the old east, and south east. As you are aware many of the remaining large French transport groupings have played host to innumerable east bloc registered lorries, running in their colours…perfectly legal, under Community law,…

Provided that the vehicle is paying the relevant road licence duty, and carries the registration plates of its own country of registration…

But of course the driver is being paid the 50 odd bob a month that applies in his own land, dramaticaly undercutting any employed French driver…And so reason the French , (and also the Germans as well…their proposed scheme is slightly more draconian than the French one)…that driver should be paid at the same rate that a Frenchman enjoys…which will if enforced bumps up the cost of employing non French , (or German), nationals, so destroying the habit of subcontracting lorry and driver from a “cheaper” country.

But as ever Brussells had to arbitrate, and as I understand from what John, (Buzzer), is saying, the actual implementation of this scheme seems to hang on the relevent driver being paid "the originating countries " national minimum wage…truly a long way from the original idea…and reinforcing in the relevant cases 50 bob, minus whatever!

Perfect ■■■■ up…and yet another administrative burden…and no doubt one that will remain…(if ever we leave the Community)!

Take it up with your MP, and keep pressure on him…oddly enough, if enough pressure is applied, it can work…And your MEP, (if you can find one of these rare and so delicate “pigs snout in the trough”, folks…try the media as well…non of them understand the world of road haulage…and because of that you can, (given enough effort), get somewhere.

Its a good idea, cocked up in its implementation, yet again!..

Cheerio for now.

I think that politicians the world over have read George Orwell’s 1984 and are using it as an instruction manual.

The part of all this that annoys me more than anything is that you can bet your last centime that les flicks will find the resources to enforce the minimum wage requirements, yet they cannot police their own roads around the ports. Absolute proof that the police are not there to serve and protect, but to collect revenue.

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Saviem:
Evening all,

Pain in the bum it is…but the idea is a sound one, and one that the political class, and the “no hoping” civil service could well utilise here…(.but they will not, because they do not understand the simple basic problem of the precious single market)…

Everything wage wise rushes to the bottom…

French haulage in particular has been hit by low cost operations from the old east, and south east. As you are aware many of the remaining large French transport groupings have played host to innumerable east bloc registered lorries, running in their colours…perfectly legal, under Community law,…

Provided that the vehicle is paying the relevant road licence duty, and carries the registration plates of its own country of registration…

But of course the driver is being paid the 50 odd bob a month that applies in his own land, dramaticaly undercutting any employed French driver…And so reason the French , (and also the Germans as well…their proposed scheme is slightly more draconian than the French one)…that driver should be paid at the same rate that a Frenchman enjoys…which will if enforced bumps up the cost of employing non French , (or German), nationals, so destroying the habit of subcontracting lorry and driver from a “cheaper” country.

But as ever Brussells had to arbitrate, and as I understand from what John, (Buzzer), is saying, the actual implementation of this scheme seems to hang on the relevent driver being paid "the originating countries " national minimum wage…truly a long way from the original idea…and reinforcing in the relevant cases 50 bob, minus whatever!

Perfect ■■■■ up…and yet another administrative burden…and no doubt one that will remain…(if ever we leave the Community)!

Take it up with your MP, and keep pressure on him…oddly enough, if enough pressure is applied, it can work…And your MEP, (if you can find one of these rare and so delicate “pigs snout in the trough”, folks…try the media as well…non of them understand the world of road haulage…and because of that you can, (given enough effort), get somewhere.

Its a good idea, cocked up in its implementation, yet again!..

Cheerio for now.

It’s more a case that the so called ‘single market’ has been corrupted way outside of any sensible boundaries.With the recent plan,to enforce west Euro wage levels on either East Euro based or flagged out East Euro haulage operations,having now obviously been turned into a diversionary exercise.While,if that’s what they really wanted,it could have been fixed by going for an EU wide minimum wage set at the highest state level.

As it stands it would also make more sense to control East Euro haulage operations’ access to the West European haulage market.In just the same way that Mexican trucks don’t have access to North American international freight journeys between US and Canada even though they are all members of NAFTA.

As for taking it up with our MP ironically he wanted us out of the EU because he thinks it is a protectionist bloc.As opposed to me wanting us out because I think it’s just a corrupt undemocratic mess that isn’t protectionist enough.Probably to the point of him even being happy lift cabotage restrictions with us as an EEA member state instead of an EU one.

Everything is arse about face nowadays, politics is a career, so are jobs in unions, whereas both were originally positions filled by people with a passion for change, people that had an axe to grind and a point to prove that would make changes for the greater good, now it’s all about getting on the board of directors and other forms of legal back handers.

Same with the Police, they’re not civil servants in the true sense of the term, they’re now enforcers and their main purpose appears to be collecting revenue for things that were legal not so long ago.

I feel very frustrated with it all, I speak to people about the direction the world is heading and I get either a blank look or accused of being a conspiracy theorist. It may be a small thing like what the French are doing, but in the grand scheme of things it’s one more restriction that’s being placed on us, little by little we’re becoming breathing robots.

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About 12 years ago I was agency working out of Tesco Strood. IIRC the drivers’ union was USDAW. There had just been a union meeting in the waiting room when I arrived. On the table was a union newsletter about a campaign to try to do something about Willi Betz drivers being paid only about £3hr. USDAW was trying to lobby for then to be paid UK miniumum wage at least for all time worked in the UK. As one would expect nothing came of what was a very good idea. In principle the thing is right, it is the means of ensuring compliance which is the problem.

All have different views on what has to be done but having cogitated IMHO the EU was supposed to be a level playing field, this it never has been and is still not today. If you have differences on conditions of work especially pay it causes friction. This is happening right now on the International transport scene, we have our selves to blame in part forinstance how many checks are made on trucks entering our country to see if they all conform to the drivers CPC not many that’s for sure and we should be enforcing this with gusto and dolling out £1000 fines and impound the vehicles until it is paid in full. We as a nation are far to soft on these laws which we never made in the first place.
On the subject of police when travelling through Euarope they are definitely just tax collectors, this was the case when I was driving back in the 70’s and its not changed that much today only that the fines are huge today in relation to back then.
In the UK how many police patrol cars do you see now, not many just a few traffic management officers on the motorways, in earlier years you would not be able to drive 10 miles without seeing a cop car either on patrol or parked up waiting for a dodgy looking vehicle to come along and then shoot out and nab it.
We need a kind of massive Wimpy construction firm with huge dozers to come and level our work place to make it an even playing field all across Europe but I cant see that happening any when soon. Suppose we just have to carry on as is and make the best of it Buzzer.

Buzzer, I posted about the french minimum wage in the euro drivers forum early july when this started.

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=138995

The idea is that whenever you are doing cabotage in france and/or are loading/unloading in France that your driver is paid minimum wage what a french driver would get. Transit is exempt !
So you have not to prove you pay english minimum wage, but french .
The idea is the same as the german one about minimum wage, but, typical french, slightly more complicated .

If you have friends or customers in France, you do not need to take an (very expensive) agent, as long as your friends have the paperwork and are willing to do it, you can get around.

As I wrote in the euro forum, what we do, is provide the driver with wage slips, a copy of the contract between your company and your driver and that attestation model 1, and we now have one of our major french customers vouching for us (with all the necessary paperwork available), when the need arises at nearly no cost at all. And up to now this is accepted by french police.

This law (and the german one as well) are just another attempt to keep our east european collegues away.
However this is not the best way to do this, but just a political solution (meaning complicated), and a way to profile himself or his party, just as politicians do, in the uk and abroad.

edit; dutch, belgian and spanish hauliers have complained with the french and europe, so this is not the end of this story.

I know my suggestion may not go down well in many quarters but I have maintained for many years that as we are an island all incoming and out going freight should be in containers and not RoRo and in a stroke it would level the playing field as we wouldn’t have "Flip Flops " or mad Paddy’s on the Nations roads. Alas I fear my recipe is not very palatable but it would stop “dead” much of the problems currently encountered. Cheers Bewick.

Bewick:
I know my suggestion may not go down well in many quarters but I have maintained for many years that as we are an island all incoming and out going freight should be in containers and not RoRo and in a stroke it would level the playing field as we wouldn’t have "Flip Flops " or mad Paddy’s on the Nations roads. Alas I fear my recipe is not very palatable but it would stop “dead” much of the problems currently encountered. Cheers Bewick.

Dennis,

A very open minded answer, just a few questions for you mind,

Where do the rest of the world drop the containers ? Maryport ?

The paddies, how do they get home then ? Big run up to a Evel Knievel ramp in Calais ?

Yes our French “cousins” are totally over the top with their ideas, but bless em,at least there do something to stop the flip flop brigade.

I run fleet of about 20 Spanish motors going around Europe (the rest are in Spain tipping and loading tanks off the ■■■■ poor European rail network)

The main problem, as in all these type of discussions boils down to the price of transport, which is at total rock bottom all over Europe, ■■ why! But think we are all at fault,

We can all give it the big answer but in practice it don’t happen, and you end up with a yard full of material “sunbathing”

The Italians have noticed what the French have done, and in their infinite wisdom have decided they will do the same.
They have voted the "“Decreto legislativo of 17 juli 2016” and they include quite a number of restrictions for cabotage.

You will need to declare, 24 hours previous, any cabotage being done, you will need an agent who has all paperwork available in Italian, and will be able to represent you.
The finer points will be available in a while, but have already decided on the fines, in between 2000 and 6000 euros .

Buzzer, I have seen on the Davies thread, your family does a lot of Italy work, so better be prepared.

Europe was meant to be the end of all this unnecessary red tape and this is proving we need some sort of Europe.
I was a fan of the EEC when we were 6, later 9, 12 and finaly 15, I am, however, not a fan of the EU with 28 countries.

bald:
The Italians have noticed what the French have done, and in their infinite wisdom have decided they will do the same.
They have voted the "“Decreto legislativo of 17 juli 2016” and they include quite a number of restrictions for cabotage.

You will need to declare, 24 hours previous, any cabotage being done, you will need an agent who has all paperwork available in Italian, and will be able to represent you.
The finer points will be available in a while, but have already decided on the fines, in between 2000 and 6000 euros .

Buzzer, I have seen on the Davies thread, your family does a lot of Italy work, so better be prepared.

Europe was meant to be the end of all this unnecessary red tape and this is proving we need some sort of Europe.
I was a fan of the EEC when we were 6, later 9, 12 and finaly 15, I am, however, not a fan of the EU with 28 countries.

What’s wrong with European transport regulations in line with those applying within NAFTA.IE no problem with cabotage regs because cabotage simply isn’t on the table at all at least regards non economically aligned states like Mexico and only in extremely very limited cases in general,nor is third party international operations regards same. As for the Italian idea at least that’s a start.

The whole point of the EU was to make things cheaper for big business, the 13 countries that joined recently had nothing to bring to the table except lower costs and wages. The transport industry proves that beyond doubt.

When I used to ply my trade on the wrong side of the road, the only cabotage going on was during groupage collections when you’d bring stuff back to the warehouse for all over and so would all the other lorries, it made sense as you didn’t have to go and do 10 collections and as a bonus you got a good drink out of it.

The blue book was used for tramping between countries and very few people used them for that, most firms used them as a unilateral permit so they could send a lorry to say, Germany one week and Italy the next without needing separate permits.

I did work for a couple of firms that used the blue books properly and at one firm I had a yellow book too. That was a cabotage book and we used to use that exclusively to get from northern Italy to the south for fruit and vegetable collections.

The system worked, everyone made money and prices were reasonable. Now everything is much cheaper, the EE hauliers are running around for rates that are lower than we were doing the job for in the 80s/90s and yet the prices in the shops haven’t gone down!

We’re being [zb]ed over by elected and unelected officials who work for big business. Transport is just the tip of the iceberg.

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newmerciaman I have learnt something from your post today as I have never heard of the yellow cabotage book well there you go. The most daring thing I ever did was with Sea Route Ferry trailers out of Le Havre, we would ship out with one trailer and say tip and load in Paris then we would sneak back to there yard in Le Havre where another trailer had been dropped by a French subbie then we would go to say Italy and back thus getting two trips from one permit set.
In my time I must have bought a dozen Blue books which we did do multi country work with say load to Italy then from there to Spain then maybe home or sometimes we did five leg or more jobs depending what was about. In the end I did get issued with a pink book but we did not really use that properly and after two years they took it back. In my time of permits I became quit proficient at writing begging letters to Newcastle trying to get more permits my Mrs always said you’ll have them crying in a minute, we managed with a few ship stores with a bung of course and some of our drivers became very good at blagging on the borders with iffy papers.
Then overnight the lot was abolished and all in sundry started doing the job, although the permit system was a pain it did restrict the numbers who could compete for the International traffic but today we are still at it but it is not the same. Britain only does now a very small proportion of the movements as inevitably we are too expensive and cannot compete, sad but that’s how it is Buzzer.

Buzzer I was on for Solstor when I had the yellow book, we used to tip Kodak in Milan and then load milk powder down to the south, it was only used in the early soft fruit season before Imola started packing, so we never used it to its full potential, unlike the blue books, which used to have us flitting around like a blue arsed fly so much that we used to have to check the change in our pockets to remember which country we were in. Although the previous nights consumption may have had an effect on that too lol.

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newmercman:
Buzzer I was on for Solstor when I had the yellow book, we used to tip Kodak in Milan and then load milk powder down to the south, it was only used in the early soft fruit season before Imola started packing, so we never used it to its full potential, unlike the blue books, which used to have us flitting around like a blue arsed fly so much that we used to have to check the change in our pockets to remember which country we were in. Although the previous nights consumption may have had an effect on that too lol.

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Hi again aint that a Mary Hopkin moment Solstor, I had four motors on for Chingford when they only had six doing the job Franky Hurren was one but although a lovely fella did not really want to do the job cant remember the other fella’s name but he had a 142 Scania then Leon Aichen decided to get bigger and started Solstor (South London Storage) they bought six new chereau fridges and that’s the start and we had four of those. All my trucks had blue books and enough running money for at least two trips, it was good at first and we grew our company with there’s and in the end we were doing up to fifteen exports a week. They IMHO paid there drivers far too much money but good luck to those who were on it at the time, the problem they had I think was they had zero man management skill’s even though there were some really good drivers on there but also some J.Arthers.
Time has moved on a pace and they are still there, Mr Aichen I have a lot of time for a proper gentleman and of course David his son came into it later and I remember him there in his early days with pimply face, what memories I hold. Of course traffic of the day was run by Mr Mark Viner and as tale has it last seen hanging up in side a fridge, god that man could lie and straight to your face and we used to be suckered in and believe him what fools we were but in the end he got the chop.
Later came Nicoll and Derdrie in the traffic office but they did not always see eye to eye, both needed handling with stealth to get what you wanted but usually we found common ground.
They were a big player back in the day but I am retired now so don’t know how big nowaday’s but they are still going and we still do a bit for them on occasions.
Nice to reminisce about old times as they were the best and ime glad I am no longer in it, cheers Buzzer.

Mark Viner is still breathing, he went to South America I think, I spoke with one of the ex Solstor boys recently and he’d heard from him. As you say he was economical with the truth, however I always knew when he was lying, it was easy, if his lips were moving, he was lying!

I was there as an employed driver both under Mark and Nicole, who I knew very well as our Dads had worked together in the past and it was a much more professional operation with Nicole running the show, young David was also coming of age and between them both they made it a better job. I disagree about being paid too much though, in those days the drivers were of a very high calibre, all very experienced fridge men (I somehow slipped through the net) and you get what you pay for, plus I’ve yet to be paid too much money for anything and I’m quite sure that having too much money is not possible lol. It was a very good job though, that’s for sure.

I subbed for them too, although I never paid my drivers Solstor wages, so I know where you’re coming from in that respect.

Goid times…