Just a wild thought on a way to shout out that enoughs enough (road hauliers can’t swallow anymore cost increases period).
Place a truck on every motorway entrance slip lane on every motorway. Motorists can exit, but no-one can get on. It would take far less vehicles than blockading oil refineries and slow trot’s around parliment/London city. Hey, why not do the same at the ferry ports and docks too.
Do this from say 6am to 8pm and hey presto (in my mind) you’ve brought the county to a halt. Every A road will be clogged. A couple of days a week should see Petrol stations and Supermarkets struggle to supply. The goverment will either call talks or send in the shields, either way the point will be made
The war cries should remind the nation that virtually everything anyone has in their possession has at some point in time been transported by a truck. That our industry has suffered numerous increases in costs recently (fuel, emmisions, tolls, driver CPC, Operator Licence reserve funds, VAT, shortages in secondhand market and potential EU trailer height restrictions, to name a few) and can sustain no more.
Just a wild thought on a way to shout out that enoughs enough (road hauliers can’t swallow anymore cost increases period).
Place a truck on every motorway entrance slip lane on every motorway. Motorists can exit, but no-one can get on. It would take far less vehicles than blockading oil refineries and slow trot’s around parliment/London city. Hey, why not do the same at the ferry ports and docks too.
Do this from say 6am to 8pm and hey presto (in my mind) you’ve brought the county to a halt. Every A road will be clogged. A couple of days a week should see Petrol stations and Supermarkets struggle to supply. The goverment will either call talks or send in the shields, either way the point will be made
The war cries should remind the nation that virtually everything anyone has in their possession has at some point in time been transported by a truck. That our industry has suffered numerous increases in costs recently (fuel, emmisions, tolls, driver CPC, Operator Licence reserve funds, VAT, shortages in secondhand market and potential EU trailer height restrictions, to name a few) and can sustain no more.
Thoughts please.
My thoughts are that you’ve not thought this one through.
Of course I haven’t, I’m merely thinking and suggesting aloud.
(to all) Thing is something needs to be done and quick, firms are vanishing that none of us ever thought would and those of us left are going to find the next few weeks and (if we make it that far) months harder still. The RHA and FTA seem to be doing little and nobody else is going to fight our corner, so we’ve got to get together and get some workable idea’s flowing and quick. It’s all well and good everyone shrugging whats happening off, but being honest, can you really afford not to get up and defend your company/job. There’s [zb] all jobs (in any sector) out there as it is and the less competition the big boys have the less they’ll want to pay.
Of course I haven’t, I’m merely thinking and suggesting aloud.
(to all) Thing is something needs to be done and quick, firms are vanishing that none of us ever thought would and those of us left are going to find the next few weeks and (if we make it that far) months harder still. The RHA and FTA seem to be doing little and nobody else is going to fight our corner, so we’ve got to get together and get some workable idea’s flowing and quick.
Firms are vanishing because they didn’t have a decent business plan, diesel prices rise week by week, anyone who is going out of business because they cannot afford to buy fuel is, well to put it mildly, a [zb]ing idiot Instead of looking at the numbers and working out a rate that covers their fixed costs (Property, equipment, staff, insurance) and then adding a surcharge to take into account variable costs (fuel) they just quote a rate that they think is lower than the competition so that they get the work, after that it’s only a matter of time before the doors close
Instead of bending over and letting customers dictate rates companies should stand firm and tell the customers what it costs to move their goods, go into any shop in the world and the price is set by the seller, yet in transport the buyer dictates the rate, it’s all back to front and you reap what you sow
Before you ask, yes I did use these methods in my own business and yes I did get laughed at, so I got out, I was in business to make money for me, not to save some mega corporation a few quid
Speaking as a private motorist I want fuel prices to come down as I’m spending 15 quid a week more to get to work than I was 6 months ago but in my opinion if the government dropped fuel duty by say 10 p a litre I’m pretty sure the shipping lines and most other customers would be looking for hauliers to drop there rates to reflect this.
In some was all of us as consumers are responsible for low rates as we all want to buy our food and goods as cheap as possible. And before carryfast pops up saying if we were buying 8 track players built in birmingham rather than an ipod made in china its not an argument about his usual ramblings. But frankly the return on the investment on your money in haulage is pitiful and rates need to go up with a surcharge to be a variable on top to reflect fluctuations on fuel prices.
The pallet companies have been running fuel surcharges for a long time.
Must admit Barbour Europeans 12% is a bit over the top but the majority are fair. Some of the Hiab guys I used to use did it as well. I dont see it as a problem as it just gets pushed on to my customer and he should pass it on to his.
When the extra cost hits the consumer they might think before they vote next time.
I notice Scotlands only refinery has been bought by the Chinese which to me is more worrying long term than £1.11 ex vat for diesel.
Parking on slip roads is not the brightest idea I`ve heard in the last twenty years.
Are we going to club together to pay the recovery fees and fines for the trucks and drivers?
Some definate valid points and TBH when you get out of the seat to pick up the nozzle and look at that price a litre it scares the [zb] out of me.
I will say tho that my boss doesn’t seem to concerned about the price so long as I’m sensible about where I get it (i.e. not most MSA’s). So I can only assume based on the replies, that he has surcharges in place (phew, I hope).
As for the risks, they were based on risks taken in the blokades and the hope that solidarity will protect. However I’m sure Mr C, won’t be sympathetic anyway, just ask any student.
(it’s amazing what whacky idea’s the mind produces in the early hours baby feeding, lol).
Of course I haven’t, I’m merely thinking and suggesting aloud.
(to all) Thing is something needs to be done and quick, firms are vanishing that none of us ever thought would and those of us left are going to find the next few weeks and (if we make it that far) months harder still. The RHA and FTA seem to be doing little and nobody else is going to fight our corner, so we’ve got to get together and get some workable idea’s flowing and quick.
Firms are vanishing because they didn’t have a decent business plan, diesel prices rise week by week, anyone who is going out of business because they cannot afford to buy fuel is, well to put it mildly, a [zb]ing idiot Instead of looking at the numbers and working out a rate that covers their fixed costs (Property, equipment, staff, insurance) and then adding a surcharge to take into account variable costs (fuel) they just quote a rate that they think is lower than the competition so that they get the work, after that it’s only a matter of time before the doors close
Instead of bending over and letting customers dictate rates companies should stand firm and tell the customers what it costs to move their goods, go into any shop in the world and the price is set by the seller, yet in transport the buyer dictates the rate, it’s all back to front and you reap what you sow
Before you ask, yes I did use these methods in my own business and yes I did get laughed at, so I got out, I was in business to make money for me, not to save some mega corporation a few quid
It’s called inflation and anyone who thinks that you’ll beat that by increasing prices and rates needs to talk to someone who’s lost a haulage business because of fuel costs versus the type of rates that the market will stand.That’s less likely in North America than here though for obvious reasons.
But in this context that ‘mega corporation’ is our own government that seems to think that inflation only needs to be controlled in the context of incomes not taxes and prices so we just end up with recession.
But the relevant bit is that you did get out but luckily you’re now working in a place where they don’t overtax their road fuel unlike here.But what would happen if O Bama ever decides to tax US road fuel at the same rate as the British government do .
I’m just hoping that O Bama did’nt read what I wrote there.It might have given him an idea and then he’ll just blame me for it when the zb hits the fan over there .They probably would’nt bother with just picketing the refineries if he raises the price of diesel and petrol to over £5 per US gallon.It’d probably be an old idea/old approach.
IF hind sight were 20/20 you would clearly see your an ■■■. The difference well for one Canada and the US have our own oil and gas reserves the oil sands has millions of barrels of recoverable oil the Alaska delta has not even been put into production. Secondly the president can not set a tax like that, it would have to pass both houses good luck on that one. Dont get me started on the differences between North America and GB as for supply and the economy of taxation.
phil_the_tramp:
Place a truck on every motorway entrance slip lane on every motorway. Motorists can exit, but no-one can get on. It would take far less vehicles than blockading oil refineries and slow trot’s around parliment/London city. Hey, why not do the same at the ferry ports and docks too
Seriously? Less vehicles? I doubt it. You’d need about 100 just for the M6.
newmercman:
Instead of bending over and letting customers dictate rates companies should stand firm and tell the customers what it costs to move their goods, go into any shop in the world and the price is set by the seller, yet in transport the buyer dictates the rate, it’s all back to front and you reap what you sow
This sounds like union tactics. Sticking together and doing work for a set price.
I thought you detested unions?
Just a wild thought on a way to shout out that enoughs enough (road hauliers can’t swallow anymore cost increases period).
Place a truck on every motorway entrance slip lane on every motorway. Motorists can exit, but no-one can get on. It would take far less vehicles than blockading oil refineries and slow trot’s around parliment/London city. Hey, why not do the same at the ferry ports and docks too.
Do this from say 6am to 8pm and hey presto (in my mind) you’ve brought the county to a halt. Every A road will be clogged. A couple of days a week should see Petrol stations and Supermarkets struggle to supply. The goverment will either call talks or send in the shields, either way the point will be made
The war cries should remind the nation that virtually everything anyone has in their possession has at some point in time been transported by a truck. That our industry has suffered numerous increases in costs recently (fuel, emmisions, tolls, driver CPC, Operator Licence reserve funds, VAT, shortages in secondhand market and potential EU trailer height restrictions, to name a few) and can sustain no more.
Thoughts please.
You are mad,the police would have you locked up with your license taken off you and the courts would throw you into jail.
If i’m being stupid here, feel free to shoot me down in flames
If you run a transport company, why does fuel prices affect buissiness?
Lets just say diesel’s £7 a gallon, you factor the fuel cost in when you quote for a job, and as everybody has to pay the same for thier fuel this must be reflected in the quote.
Would I be right in saying that fuel is deductable from your company tax bill?
Made up figures;
Company A is asked to quote a load from cornwall to scotland.
Company B is asked to quote a load from cornwall to scotland.
Lets assume both companies run the same vehcile, both companies would have the same fuel bill.
Somebody has just sent me this e-mail, I don’t know if it’s an old one that is just doing the rounds but I think that something like this could actually work.
Here is an interesting idea to think about (and act upon?)… We are hitting £129.9 a litre in some areas now and soon we will
be faced
with paying £1.50 per litre. So Philip Hollsworth offered this
good idea:
This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the ‘don’t buy petrol on a certain day campaign’ that was going around last April or May! The oil companies just
laughed at that because they knew we wouldn’t continue to hurt
ourselves by refusing to buy petrol. It was more of an inconvenience to us than it was a problem for them. BUT, whoever thought of this idea, has come up
with a plan that can really work.
Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of a litre is CHEAP, we need to take aggressive
action to teach them that BUYERS - not sellers control the market place.
With the price of petrol going up more each day, we consumers need to take action.
The only way we are going to see the price of petrol come down is if we hit someone in the pocket by not purchasing their petrol! And we can
do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves. Here’s the idea:
For the rest of this year DON’T purchase ANY petrol from the two
biggest oil companies (which now are one) i.e. ESSO and BP.
If they are not selling any petrol, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit. But to have an impact we need to reach literally millions of Esso and BP petrol buyers. It’s really simple to do!! It’s easy to make this happen.
Just buy your petrol at Shell,Asda,Tesco, Sainsburys, Morrisons, Jet etc. i.e. JUST Boycott BP and Esso IT’S GOTTA BE WORTH A TRY
Sorry if this has already been posted before but it’s the first time that I have noticed it.
mushroomman:
Somebody has just sent me this e-mail, I don’t know if it’s an old one that is just doing the rounds but I think that something like this could actually work.
Here is an interesting idea to think about (and act upon?)… We are hitting £129.9 a litre in some areas now and soon we will
be faced
with paying £1.50 per litre. So Philip Hollsworth offered this
good idea:
This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the ‘don’t buy petrol on a certain day campaign’ that was going around last April or May! The oil companies just
laughed at that because they knew we wouldn’t continue to hurt
ourselves by refusing to buy petrol. It was more of an inconvenience to us than it was a problem for them. BUT, whoever thought of this idea, has come up
with a plan that can really work.
Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of a litre is CHEAP, we need to take aggressive
action to teach them that BUYERS - not sellers control the market place.
With the price of petrol going up more each day, we consumers need to take action.
The only way we are going to see the price of petrol come down is if we hit someone in the pocket by not purchasing their petrol! And we can
do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves. Here’s the idea:
For the rest of this year DON’T purchase ANY petrol from the two
biggest oil companies (which now are one) i.e. ESSO and BP.
If they are not selling any petrol, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit. But to have an impact we need to reach literally millions of Esso and BP petrol buyers. It’s really simple to do!!
Now, don’t wimp out on me at this point… keep reading and I’ll
explain how
simple it is to reach millions of people!!
I am sending this note to a lot of people. If all of you send it
to at
least ten more (30 x 10 = 300)…and those 300 send it to at
least ten more
(300 x 10 = 3,000) … and so on. By the time the message reaches
the sixth
generation of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION
consumers! If
those three million get excited and pass this on to ten friends
each, then
30 million people will have been contacted! If it goes one level
further,
you guessed it…
THREE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE!!!
Again, all YOU have to do is send this to 10 people. That’s all
(and not buy
at ESSO/BP). How long would all that take? If each of us sends
this email
out to ten more people within one day of receipt, all 300 MILLION
people
could conceivably be contacted within the next 8 days!!! Acting
together we
can make a difference. If this makes sense to you, please pass
this message
on.
PLEASE HOLD OUT UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES It’s easy to make this happen.
Just buy your petrol at Shell,Asda,Tesco, Sainsburys, Morrisons, Jet etc. i.e. JUST Boycott BP and Esso IT’S GOTTA BE WORTH A TRY
big flaw their but who do you think supplies the supermarkets with their petrol
rambo19:
If i’m being stupid here, feel free to shoot me down in flames
If you run a transport company, why does fuel prices affect buissiness?
Lets just say diesel’s £7 a gallon, you factor the fuel cost in when you quote for a job, and as everybody has to pay the same for thier fuel this must be reflected in the quote.
Would I be right in saying that fuel is deductable from your company tax bill?
Made up figures;
Company A is asked to quote a load from cornwall to scotland.
Company B is asked to quote a load from cornwall to scotland.
Lets assume both companies run the same vehcile, both companies would have the same fuel bill.
Am I being dim?
You’re forgetting that it’s customers who make paydays possible and it’s the end user/customer who pays for the total costs of the fuel.Fuel is only deductable from the company tax bill after it’s already been paid for by the customer because the tax man is’nt in business to pay for the customer’s fuel part of the haulage quote and ‘tax deductable’ just means that you won’t be charged income tax on your costs but that is’nt the same thing as free fuel for the customer.
However the reason why the pump price of fuel affects business is because high transport costs cut demand for the services offered and also takes spending power out of the economy in general which causes even less demand.So same capacity but less demand equals even lower rates.So you then end up in a downward spiral of high fuel costs=less demand=lower rates=less wages in the industry for drivers.In addition to all that you’ve got the additional issues of inflation because high fuel costs mean that any money you do earn will be worth less because as you say everyone will try to pass the extra costs on into the economy which increases prices except that the economy can’t withstand that level of inflation anyway as we learnt during the end of the 1970’s.
In this situation it’s those hauliers who can work with a rate cutting environment and for lower wages than their competitors and who blink last who’ll survive and in that type of scenario raising rates to match fuel cost increases is suicidal.
mushroomman:
Somebody has just sent me this e-mail, I don’t know if it’s an old one that is just doing the rounds but I think that something like this could actually work.
Here is an interesting idea to think about (and act upon?)… We are hitting £129.9 a litre in some areas now and soon we will
be faced
with paying £1.50 per litre. So Philip Hollsworth offered this
good idea:
This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the ‘don’t buy petrol on a certain day campaign’ that was going around last April or May! The oil companies just
laughed at that because they knew we wouldn’t continue to hurt
ourselves by refusing to buy petrol. It was more of an inconvenience to us than it was a problem for them. BUT, whoever thought of this idea, has come up
with a plan that can really work.
Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of a litre is CHEAP, we need to take aggressive
action to teach them that BUYERS - not sellers control the market place.
With the price of petrol going up more each day, we consumers need to take action.
The only way we are going to see the price of petrol come down is if we hit someone in the pocket by not purchasing their petrol! And we can
do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves. Here’s the idea:
For the rest of this year DON’T purchase ANY petrol from the two
biggest oil companies (which now are one) i.e. ESSO and BP.
If they are not selling any petrol, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit. But to have an impact we need to reach literally millions of Esso and BP petrol buyers. It’s really simple to do!! It’s easy to make this happen.
Just buy your petrol at Shell,Asda,Tesco, Sainsburys, Morrisons, Jet etc. i.e. JUST Boycott BP and Esso IT’S GOTTA BE WORTH A TRY
Sorry if this has already been posted before but it’s the first time that I have noticed it.
Instead of trying to block motorway junctions, someone once came up with another barking idea. Everytime you encounter a roundabout, drive around it twice, that will cause enough chaos for some folks to get frustrated and take out half the population with a Uzi. There may be a few politicians in that number
Instead of looking at the numbers and working out a rate that covers their fixed costs (Property, equipment, staff, insurance) and then adding a surcharge to take into account variable costs (fuel) they just quote a rate that they think is lower than the competition so that they get the work, after that it’s only a matter of time before the doors close 
.
