IN THE NEWS TODAY
Foreign trucks to pay £9 a day
Biggest news this week is that the government plans to set the charge for foreign trucks coming into the UK at £9 a day under its latest proposals for a lorry road user charging scheme. UK operators will face an extra bill of £450 a year under the scheme – though this should be refunded through lower VED
BigE:
IN THE NEWS TODAY
Foreign trucks to pay £9 a day
Biggest news this week is that the government plans to set the charge for foreign trucks coming into the UK at £9 a day under its latest proposals for a lorry road user charging scheme. UK operators will face an extra bill of £450 a year under the scheme – though this should be refunded through lower VED
Have you got a link to todays news?
It is good to know how many turkeys will vote for Christmas on this issue 
Was in commercial motor
kr79:
Was in commercial motor
Yes. I read it in early February. I thought there had been an update from the powers that be.
There was an update in this weeks but I haven’t had a chance to read it yet. I’d imagine it would be on rt.com
It"s the “should be refunded” bit that worries me !
Is it just me who thinks that a £9 a day charge is more of an insult than anything? 
We took a truck to Bordeaux last week. In spite of going around the toll free autoroute as far as Nantes (even though we landed at Le Havre), this cost us 180 odd euros plus an extra 56 miles for going the longer way around. The cost of the more direct route through Tours, Le Mans etc I don’t have a figure for (we have not been brave enough to try it! 
) But I would guess it might be twice that at least. And you just can’t run the nationals all the way to Bordeaux, and still be there in a reasonable amount of time, in our experience.
So would somebody please tell me how us charging them £9 a day to drive as far as they can in their 10 (legal) hours on our best quality (ahem) roads is fair? When it cost us 20 times that to do three days driving in France?!!!
It will probably cost more than £9 a go to collect the money and enforce it! 
Helen Stevens:
So would somebody please tell me how us charging them £9 a day to drive as far as they can in their 10 (legal) hours on our best quality (ahem) roads is fair? When it cost us 20 times that to do three days driving in France?!!!
Because we don’t have a network of motorways funded by the tolls collected for using them. and it would be an insult to charge somebody more than £9 a day to use our pot holled over crowded road network, when most of the money will never be spent on the maintainance of the roads.
Of course if foreign trucks have to pay £9 a day then so do UK registared trucks.
At a quick calculation £9 for say 5 days a week for 48 weeks a year is £2160 and I’m sure most trucks will be used more than that.
HGV VED Band G £1850 per year.
Helen Stevens:
Is it just me who thinks that a £9 a day charge is more of an insult than anything?So would somebody please tell me how us charging them £9 a day to drive as far as they can in their 10 (legal) hours on our best quality (ahem) roads is fair? When it cost us 20 times that to do three days driving in France?!!!
It will probably cost more than £9 a go to collect the money and enforce it!
Helen I believe comparing France with the UK or anywhere else in Europe is misleading. French Motorways are partly run and funded by private companies. The Government have a stake in them but in general the administration and upkeep costs are covered by the tolls levied by many different companies.
You will be aware that the Benelux Denmark and Sweden are funded from the Eurovignette with a fixed cost of €8 per day. Germany did subscribe to this system before they went for their own much more expensive km based MAUT.
We have discussed this many times before, but we are not allowed to just charge foreign vehicles, we must charge our own operators the same price. I drove for a French Company and we were not allowed to use the peage without permission. I have a list of alternative routes which avoid pay points.
To my mind collection of tolls is a simple procedure, the ferry company or eurotunnel become tax collectors, much like the travel agents collect airport taxes. Each time a vehicle comes to these shores, the clock starts ticking, when they leave, they are charged by the days they were in the UK.
The only difficulty I foresee is vehicles crossing from Eire to Northern Ireland which would need to be done manually or by ANPR on the border points, which may go against Schengen or some other human rights stuff.
muckles:
HGV VED Band G £1850 per year.
HGV VED Band D ( 26 t 3 axles, RFS & reduced pollution ) + Trailer Supplement ( over 12t ) £510 (or without reduced pollution £880 ) 
Denis F:
muckles:
HGV VED Band G £1850 per year.HGV VED Band D ( 26 t 3 axles, RFS & reduced pollution ) + Trailer Supplement ( over 12t ) £510 (or without reduced pollution £880 )
Fair enough Dennis the point I was trying to make is that the most expensive VED rate is £1850, but a simple calculation on the proposed road charging was at least £2160 pa. Even with a £450 rebate still seems more expensive for UK hauliers, especially if you pay less than band G tax. 
Maybe £5 a day with a reduced fee for bulk buying say more than 6 months tax, might even it up a bit.
muckles:
Denis F:
muckles:
HGV VED Band G £1850 per year.HGV VED Band D ( 26 t 3 axles, RFS & reduced pollution ) + Trailer Supplement ( over 12t ) £510 (or without reduced pollution £880 )
Fair enough Dennis the point I was trying to make is that the most expensive VED rate is £1850, but a simple calculation on the proposed road charging was at least £2160 pa. Even with a £450 rebate still seems more expensive for UK hauliers, especially if you pay less than band G tax.
Maybe £5 a day with a reduced fee for bulk buying say more than 6 months tax, might even it up a bit.
I’m sure whatever they do it will cost hauliers more !!!
Denis F:
muckles:
Denis F:
muckles:
HGV VED Band G £1850 per year.HGV VED Band D ( 26 t 3 axles, RFS & reduced pollution ) + Trailer Supplement ( over 12t ) £510 (or without reduced pollution £880 )
Fair enough Dennis the point I was trying to make is that the most expensive VED rate is £1850, but a simple calculation on the proposed road charging was at least £2160 pa. Even with a £450 rebate still seems more expensive for UK hauliers, especially if you pay less than band G tax.
Maybe £5 a day with a reduced fee for bulk buying say more than 6 months tax, might even it up a bit.
I’m sure whatever they do it will cost hauliers more !!!
I can only agree with that DenDen 
muckles:
Fair enough Dennis the point I was trying to make is that the most expensive VED rate is £1850, but a simple calculation on the proposed road charging was at least £2160 pa. Even with a £450 rebate still seems more expensive for UK hauliers, especially if you pay less than band G tax.Maybe £5 a day with a reduced fee for bulk buying say more than 6 months tax, might even it up a bit.
I don’t have the article to hand, but having read it the other day I am reasonably sure that it said that the proposal is to give a bulk buy discount, which brings it down to £450 per year for those who buy annual ‘passes’ (mostly us Brits) with stepped rates for monthly and weekly passes (or something like that) up to £9 per day for the one day ‘pass’. So don’t worry about that one, muckles. For once they’re on our side. Sort of.
Helen Stevens:
muckles:
Fair enough Dennis the point I was trying to make is that the most expensive VED rate is £1850, but a simple calculation on the proposed road charging was at least £2160 pa. Even with a £450 rebate still seems more expensive for UK hauliers, especially if you pay less than band G tax.Maybe £5 a day with a reduced fee for bulk buying say more than 6 months tax, might even it up a bit.
I don’t have the article to hand, but having read it the other day I am reasonably sure that it said that the proposal is to give a bulk buy discount, which brings it down to £450 per year for those who buy annual ‘passes’ (mostly us Brits) with stepped rates for monthly and weekly passes (or something like that) up to £9 per day for the one day ‘pass’. So don’t worry about that one, muckles. For once they’re on our side. Sort of.
Sounds like a bit of sense, but I assume you’ll still have to pay VED?
muckles:
Sounds like a bit of sense, but I assume you’ll still have to pay VED?
Yes, like others have been saying they say they are going to reduce the cost of the VED by the cost of an annual ‘pass’. Whether they do or not remains to be seen. I daresay they will see it as an excuse to ‘review’ the rates. Reading into it it seemed to me that there would be reduced rates for smaller vehicles, so I suppose they will take the current cost of the VED for those smaller vehicles and proportion it down? At a guess. (Wish I had my CM to hand! It’s down the house because we like to read it on weekends!)