Are there any British firms that run out to Poland and further a field? I drove out there with a friend a few months back who was moving to Poland and didnt see any British registered trucks after getting about half way through Germany.
I suppose its cheaper to send the stuff by a foreign firm going back that way instead of a british one??
Kinda answered your own question!!
The Polish transport firms are even taking work from the German companies here, as I mentioned in another post a while back. 
The Poles in particular but its not only them are taking vast amounts of work from transport companies in all western European countries at an alarming rate. It was only a few weeks ago I was actually speaking to a Greek driver, whilst doing so a Polish truck parked up near by and his attention suddenly turned to how he hates all the Polish trucks in Greece taking all the work etc. I’ve even heard the same coming from other Eastern European drivers, the Estonians, Czechs and Slovenians often feel very bitterly towards the Poles.
It can’t come as a surprise to anyone. Any human being with the a single brain cell must have realised that the opening up of markets to a country who has overheads vastly lower than any company in the West could ever dream of, well, companies from that country, given the chance are going to walk all over anyone they chose and its happened and happening right now. Poles, Czechs, Hungarians etc can make profit far below the line that would signal bankruptcy to any British company. Its not healthy competition, its nothing short of industrial genocide. The blunt truth of the matter is that no British, German, French or Dutch company can compete in this market, the current state of affairs are being dictated soley by how fast Eastern European transport companies can expand and take the work, and with a country as vast as Poland, with such a huge population and sky high unemployment, well, need I say anything else.
Don’t forget, the massive differences won’t last that long.
We will all have to weather this rough patch, British, Other West European and East European companies and drivers. It wasn’t that long ago when we were all moaning about the Eastern Block companies stealing all the work. Their rates have had to increase, to keep pace with their improving economy, so their drivers are moaning about the same thing we were, then This is yet another stage in the same process.
Over the next few years, the Polish economy will catch up with the more affluent West. Their costs will go up to be more or less in line with us, so their haulage rates will go up and things will settle down to what will become the status quo.
That may well be a few years down the line. Companies on all sides will go to the wall, drivers will loose there jobs. This type of thing is nothing new, its been happening in business for centuries. Call Centres moving out of the UK to India is another example of exactly the same thing.
None of this is any comfort to any of us, but its a fact of life. It always has been and always will be.
I realistically dont see Poland ever been on or that near the level of westerm Europe. They are simply too large with a large population and massive unemployment. Look at how bad east Germany still is after 15 years of having money pumped into it by west Germany, the worlds third richest country. Underneath the surface its little better now than it was 15 years ago for the average man on the street which is why those who remained still live in poverty as unemployment is very high and plenty have moved to west Germany to find work. Polish wages and overheads will go up, but they will never be as high as in western Europe and even if they were, they’d have a massive foothold on the market anyway. The British decline in international transport has been going on for years now, first started when we couldn’t compete with other western European countries, but now the industry is being absoluetly hammered into the ground. At the end of the day we have no one but our very own government to blame, for it is they who impose impossible overheads on us and deem us un-competetive and it is they who fail to fight our corner in Brussels so we have a situation where practically every foreign truck coming into Britain is exempt from the WTD, yet we are not and there are plenty of foreign trucks doing soley UK only work now, who are vastly more competive than we, not only because of their lower overheads, but because the law that is applied onto us, is not applied unto them.
The improving Polish economy is starting to leave its mark actually, with wage rises etc. Just the other week one of the Ro/Ro’s that works from the Humber to the continent got rid of the entire Polish crew and replaced them with Russians. At one time Polish sailors were displacing Filipino sailors (both of whom had displaced British sailors) but now the Filipino’s still with lower wages are starting to prise Poles out of jobs on German owned ships.
Ultimately Poland wont matter because another problem will face us, in the form of Romania and Bulgaria in the European Union and Poland will be nothing compared to that. I doubt that Turkey will ever join, but on the off chance they did, and legislation wasn’t in place by then to force Europe to even out so one country/state couldn’t adversely affect another by seriously undercutting it, then Turkey would be a disaster for practically everyone but those who wish to buy homes in the sun. Turkish trucks can afford to sit two weeks waiting for a load either here or in Turkey, thats something even the Poles couldn’t do, so just imagine that sort of set up being let lose into Europe.
Believe it or not I’m very pro European but it has to be sensible and its as far from sensible as it could possibly be at the moment. I would like to see a day when British, Polish and German companies can all opperate equally in the same market, not where one, by the fact it comes from a certain country, can undercut the other two, expand and gobble up the market place.
I had a night out with 2 Chambers And Cook drivers(from Birmingham) around February,at an Autohof on the A2.(Germany, not Kent 
) they apparently do Poland very regularly so they told me.
kindle530:
I had a night out with 2 Chambers And Cook drivers(from Birmingham) around February,at an Autohof on the A2.(Germany, not Kent
How do they manage that? I know it does happen because Eddies Transport from Scunthorpe still does Poland, though he is Polish or his parents are, whichever it is. I’m not sure if any of his British drivers do it anymore though as he has a few motors on Polish plates with Polish drivers that are semi based over here. I’m led to believe that he still has one or two English lads going to Poland now and then, but I cant varify it.
Any British company that can do Polish work and still make a profit must surely have some very loyal customers, unless its specialized cargoes they’re taking, something that the majority of Polish companies don’t or can’t do.
we work for a german firm thatdoes send lorrys daily to poland and beyond but we deal in speacil transport of hot chemical loads andhave atpresent the best tanks in the market andtherefore havenotsuh a big problem with being outbidden for the work.
brit pete:
we work for a german firm thatdoes send lorrys daily to poland and beyond but we deal in speacil transport of hot chemical loads andhave atpresent the best tanks in the market andtherefore havenotsuh a big problem with being outbidden for the work.
Good to hear that Brit Pete. I see that you live in Dortmund, I wont be far from you in just over a week as I’m visiting my family over there and they all come from the Iserlohn area.