north surrey haulage:
If you are the bearer of the knowledge of all things haulage then why not put your money where your mouth is & show us all how it’s done?
Because the difference between many owner driver’s (including yourself) and myself is that I was born with a brain and know how to use it 
.
I don’t sit there scratching my head watching the fuel prices quickly soar to a quid a litre while I’m pulling boxes about for a quid a mile (take a few pence) and then suddenly decide the best way to solve my problems would be to go out and spend 80 grand on a brand new souped up motor . What a bright idea that was.
Then after it’s been delivered watch it spend more time in the garage than on the road earning money, believing that Volvo really are interested in keeping their one-man-band owner driver’s happy and will fix it for me , whilst I just sit there losing potential earnings hand over fist and expecting it all to magically right itself one day .
As for showing you how it’s done, that will never happen because I can see perfectly clearly that the figures don’t add up on paper and that’s even before factoring in any “unexpected” things like breakdowns, accidents etc.
When my Old Man was alive (roughly 20 years ago), he worked closely with an owner driver in Leeds (believe the bloke was called Harry Westerman t/as H.Westerman Transport or something like that; now long gone anyway) and back then they used to make some good money because in comparison to what rates are now, they were good. Every time the fuel price went up, the cost was passed on the customer. This went well until all the under-cutting started a few years later which has carried on right up to this current day. Westerman could instantly see the way the industry was heading - as could my Old Man - and they didn’t waste any time in wrapping the company up. Best decision they ever made.
With the exception of Paul and a few others, the rest of you work for the rate that your customer dictates to you and if you don’t like it, tough [zb], go elsewhere. You try passing on a fuel surcharge to your customer and they’ll laugh at you - lots. Bizarrely though, you just keep taking whatever [zb] they throw at you and continue to run circles round them working for the same fixed rate while everything else in the industry goes up in price which you have to foot the tab for. What exactly are you holding out for? The “magical” day when suddenly the rates are going to jump from a quid a mile to a fiver a mile (which is probably not far off what they would be if the rates from 20-30 years ago had gone up in line with inflation, fuel prices and everything else)? You’re never going to make anymore money out of it. All that’s going to happen is you’re going to continue to be squeezed tighter and tighter by rising costs while the mileage rates stay fixed, until the point comes when you’re running at a loss where ever you go and eventually you wind up bankrupt and several hundred thousand quid out of pocket. Then you’ll be wishing you took notice of this thread instead of knocking it because “Rob K knows [zb] all because he’s never done it”.
That’s the hard truth of the matter, so why do you continue to put up with it when it’s never going to get any better? Why is it only me that can see it? Are all you owner driver’s blind FFS ?
O - P - E - N - - - - - - Y O U R - - - - - - E Y E S.
. I think it’s a case of ‘the truth hurts’ but you aren’t man enough to admit it 
.