The UK Haulage Industry in a Nutshell?

UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUMS THE UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUM (INTERACTIVE)
101

Bluey Circles:
If you made diesel free hauliers would just do the work cheaper, there would be no extra profits and no higher wages. The haulage industry has always destroyed itself by undercutting each other until there is bugger all profit.

We’re thankfully coming out of the EU so hopefully we can dictate our own rules, so how about an entirely different approach. Treble the cost of petrol and diesel with taxation, fossil fuels are a precious resource and we should be using them more sparingly. Goods will still need moved so prices will need to go up a little to cover the higher fuel costs, there will be more money passing through the industry and a little extra in profits and wages will be a smaller part of turnover. Higher wages is more likely with higher running costs than lower running costs!

I know you worry about the railways, but they are hopeless for moving goods, in any case they are passenger orientated, and with higher fuel costs reducing the amount of cars as the rail becomes more affordable, there will be even less capacity on the rails for goods.

Think about it - higher wages and quieter roads - sounds good to me.

Spoken like a true cyclist! :wink:

102

Has anyone ever seen any serious management with regards to simply using the right vehicle for the right job?

You’ve got trucks delivering fresh air one way all the time, artics with 4 pallets on them, 17tonners sent into 6’6" streets by mistake, and 7.5tonners sent to pick up one item like a generator that weights five tonnes…

Not being able to save some money there, - they’ll no doubt cut T&Cs of drivers, cut hourly rates, cut use of agency for “longer” shifts, not realizing you lose more money getting an agency to do a 5 hour job paid minimum 8 hours for, and of course - cut overtime.

I wonder if TMs need to be taught how to BE TMs. :unamused:

103

Carryfast:
We’re discussing a world in which truck drivers learn the meaning of solidarity just like their train driver counterparts.In which case a massive reduction in fuel costs ‘can’ then be translated into increased wages for drivers.But what won’t work is solidarity trying to do same against the status quo of unproductive vehicle length and weight limits combined with extortionate levels of road fuel taxation.On that note I’m guessing you mean treble the rate of road fuel duty not the cost of fuel.In which case go for it and see what happens to what remains of the road transport industry and the motor industry/trade.Not to mention household budgets when people rightly try to maintain their freedom of car use.While if you really want to impose green bs policies then at least get an electoral mandate first.Remind us what the Green vote was at the last election. :unamused:

When there has been big reductions in the cost of diesel, such as last years price collapse; What was the most common outcome.
a) wages went up
b) rates for transporting goods went down (usually set by the company sending the goods)

The cost of diesel have very little impact on drivers wage packets.

104

Winseer:
Has anyone ever seen any serious management with regards to simply using the right vehicle for the right job?

You’ve got trucks delivering fresh air one way all the time, artics with 4 pallets on them, 17tonners sent into 6’6" streets by mistake, and 7.5tonners sent to pick up one item like a generator that weights five tonnes…

Not being able to save some money there, - they’ll no doubt cut T&Cs of drivers, cut hourly rates, cut use of agency for “longer” shifts, not realizing you lose more money getting an agency to do a 5 hour job paid minimum 8 hours for, and of course - cut overtime.

I wonder if TMs need to be taught how to BE TMs. :unamused:

I think a big reason for these incidents, is a company structure where the cpc holder is a director, and the foot soldiers running the show are unqualified operators without any business sense. Maybe there needs to be an intermediate cpc for operators and line managers.

105

Carryfast:
Define ‘base loads’.

Do I really need to define it any more precisely? We know the category we’re talking about - movements that occur on a regular schedule in high (i.e. freight train sized) volumes.

When what you’re actually describing is a stated admitted deliberate government policy,of rigging the transport market

You mean regulating the market to prevent undercutting?

to transfer freight,which is already established in being transported ‘efficiently’ by road,onto rail.‘Rigging’ in this case being the artificial imposition of unfair road transport specific taxation and unnecessary restrictions on vehicle dimensions and weights.

There have always been dimensional restrictions on road freight. Just as there are dimensional restrictions on rail freight, particularly in the form of weights and heights (because the alternative is having to replace track more often and risking bridges being knocked over), and the lengths of individual wagons (because of turning circles).

I don’t see why you seem to think this is a kind of “rigging”, as opposed to perfectly reasonable restrictions imposed for infrastructure and safety reasons - you seem to think, like all those with undeveloped thinking and superstitions, that your point is self-evident.

And as I’ve said, the road-transport-specific taxation (presumably you mean road fuel duty) is not necessarily unfair just because it applies only to road transport.

As I’ve said, the rail industry is integrated and pays for its own infrastructure. Under BR, the same firm literally owned everything and paid for everything.

That has never been the case in road transport, and the hordes of two-bit, one-man road haulage operators are as far away from owning and paying for their own infrastructure as can possibly be imagined.

There has to be some other way then to extract the price of infrastructure, and that is by taxation - that is the fundamental role of taxation, to efficiently extract the price of things that would otherwise be difficult or inefficient to charge for (even a toll bar or ticket office at the entrance and exit to every premises would obviously be far more expensive to maintain, enforce, and administer than simply telling petrochemical suppliers to add a price to fuel, which roughly imposes a charge according to the use of the road network, and imposes no further administration burden on fuel users beyond the buying of fuel which they do anyway).

Another perfectly proper function of taxation is to redress market failures (in the sense that the market reaches an equilibrium that is politically unacceptable, or has large economic externalities which are perceived politically but are not priced into the market).

The cheapness of labour in road transport is probably a prime example of this, where a technologically more suitable mode of transport (like rail), may be wholly undercut temporarily by the sheer cheapness of labour in another. The effect of that temporary undercutting may be to completely destroy the economics of a rail system that has high fixed costs and relies on high utilisation, which the government either then has to subsidise until the cheapness of labour in road abates (which it can only afford by raising taxes), or if not subsidised then allow the industry to financially collapse.

On that note exactly what is supposedly so different about a 26-32t rigid pulling a 45 ft drawbar trailer as opposed to tractor unit pulling a 45-50 foot semi trailer.

I think when they looked at it, one of the first things they said was that there would be no motorway parking for such long vehicles. Secondly, approved routes would have to be surveyed and adhered to, and road closures might mean such vehicles were dead-ended. Thirdly, (and perhaps particularly because of the route restrictions) there would be insufficient ability to find full capacity return loads.

And ultimately any attempt at solutions for the above would mean higher taxes on road haulage in one way or another to pay for it, which is another factor bearing on road haulage which you wanted reduced.

Or for that matter why would you think that use of those combined with use of red diesel wouldn’t provide a much better chance of increasing wage levels and terms and conditions for drivers.No surprise that UNITE won’t see it that way like you being lumbered with Socialist dogma that keeps truck drivers second class workers v train drivers. :unamused:

The result being that yet again they’ll be left behind in favour of their German counterparts.

youtube.com/watch?v=0xDhKuT1JII

No, I don’t agree that use of red diesel will help anyone, because in the first place the lost taxation will have to be replaced from elsewhere.

More to the point for drivers, the reason for low wages is not high costs!

You don’t seem to have grasped this in my previous post. If the driver is struggling to breathe when trapped under a millstone (which represents market competition and the power of capital versus labour), digging out the ground underneath the driver by eroding costs (which competition also bears upon), will not lead to more room to breathe - the millstone will simply fall under gravity with the driver, exerting the same pressure on the driver’s chest as before, but the price the customer has to pay can now drop a little bit.

106

Bluey Circles:
When there has been big reductions in the cost of diesel, such as last years price collapse; What was the most common outcome.
a) wages went up
b) rates for transporting goods went down (usually set by the company sending the goods)

The cost of diesel have very little impact on drivers wage packets.

To be fair going from silly price down to a bit less but still silly price,which certainly couldn’t be called a price ‘collapse’,was never going to provide the scope for wage increases which allowing trucks to use red diesel would. :bulb:

107

Carryfast:
The job of unions is to stop wage competition between operators.

So why is it not legitimate for unions (or even the government itself) to stop wage competition between road and rail operators?

unnecessary vehicle dimension and weight limits and unfair road fuel taxation limits the scope for wage demands in the industry across the board.

No, it doesn’t do any such thing. Rail will always have a technological advantage in productivity. What is keeping driver’s wages down (and falling) is plain lack of bargaining power. In other words, it is not the overall size of the pie that is too small, but the adequacy of the driver’s share of it, and the ability of other groups in society to grab too large a slice of it.

Most of our pie is being eaten by price wars amongst supermarkets and other haulage “customers”. The loss of our wages is not remotely compensated for by the benefits of lower consumer prices which are shared by everybody (whereas, for those who live on unearned income, or who are in privileged occupations with secure wages, they get the benefit in prices without any of the cost in terms of income).

The effect of growing the pie with increased productivity will simply lead to an even bigger share of the pie being eaten by customers, so that drivers are left with the same slice as before. In other words, if they can bend us right over now, why won’t they bend us over when the pie grows?

IE what’s needed is for UNITE to fight for truck drivers and the road transport industry in just the same way that ASLEF and RMT fights for train drivers and the rail industry. :bulb: The problem being that those like Rjan apply double standards in that regard which keeps truck drivers as second class workers.

But then drivers will have to begin by actually joining Unite, and by being solid with other workers. For example, if the train drivers are on strike, then if drivers are asked to move those goods, they will have to do it only at quadruple the normal hourly rate (or some other figure which makes the employers/customers squeal), and contribute some of that back into a strike fund for railwaymen.

108

Carryfast:
We’re discussing a world in which truck drivers learn the meaning of solidarity just like their train driver counterparts.In which case a massive reduction in fuel costs ‘can’ then be translated into increased wages for drivers.

But solidarity must come first. Our economic productivity has actually increased for 40 years, but the proceeds have been almost exclusively captured by the rich, as well as consumed by the burdens of competition (i.e. workers may be more productive, but they now have to pay huge amounts for things that do not improve their wellbeing, such as the advertising of washing powder, or put lots of unpaid time into things that are scientifically shown to reduce wellbeing like comparing markets or comparing too many almost-equivalent products).

But what won’t work is solidarity trying to do same against the status quo of unproductive vehicle length and weight limits combined with extortionate levels of road fuel taxation.

On the contrary, solidarity is exactly what will work in workers taking back our fair share of the pie we help create. There is no shortage of pie overall; the rich have never been richer.

On that note I’m guessing you mean treble the rate of road fuel duty not the cost of fuel.In which case go for it and see what happens to what remains of the road transport industry and the motor industry/trade.

You should know the answer to this Carryfast. Nothing will happen to road transport if fuel costs triple. It will just be passed straight on to customers, and much the same goods will get moved as before but at higher prices.

109

Rjan:

Carryfast:
Define ‘base loads’.

Do I really need to define it any more precisely? We know the category we’re talking about - movements that occur on a regular schedule in high (i.e. freight train sized) volumes.

When what you’re actually describing is a stated admitted deliberate government policy,of rigging the transport market

You mean regulating the market to prevent undercutting?

to transfer freight,which is already established in being transported ‘efficiently’ by road,onto rail.‘Rigging’ in this case being the artificial imposition of unfair road transport specific taxation and unnecessary restrictions on vehicle dimensions and weights.

There have always been dimensional restrictions on road freight. Just as there are dimensional restrictions on rail freight, particularly in the form of weights and heights (because the alternative is having to replace track more often and risking bridges being knocked over), and the lengths of individual wagons (because of turning circles).

I don’t see why you seem to think this is a kind of “rigging”, as opposed to perfectly reasonable restrictions imposed for infrastructure and safety reasons - you seem to think, like all those with undeveloped thinking and superstitions, that your point is self-evident.

And as I’ve said, the road-transport-specific taxation (presumably you mean road fuel duty) is not necessarily unfair just because it applies only to road transport.

As I’ve said, the rail industry is integrated and pays for its own infrastructure. Under BR, the same firm literally owned everything and paid for everything.

That has never been the case in road transport, and the hordes of two-bit, one-man road haulage operators are as far away from owning and paying for their own infrastructure as can possibly be imagined.

There has to be some other way then to extract the price of infrastructure, and that is by taxation - that is the fundamental role of taxation, to efficiently extract the price of things that would otherwise be difficult or inefficient to charge for (even a toll bar or ticket office at the entrance and exit to every premises would obviously be far more expensive to maintain, enforce, and administer than simply telling petrochemical suppliers to add a price to fuel, which roughly imposes a charge according to the use of the road network, and imposes no further administration burden on fuel users beyond the buying of fuel which they do anyway).

Another perfectly proper function of taxation is to redress market failures (in the sense that the market reaches an equilibrium that is politically unacceptable, or has large economic externalities which are perceived politically but are not priced into the market).

The cheapness of labour in road transport is probably a prime example of this, where a technologically more suitable mode of transport (like rail), may be wholly undercut temporarily by the sheer cheapness of labour in another. The effect of that temporary undercutting may be to completely destroy the economics of a rail system that has high fixed costs and relies on high utilisation, which the government either then has to subsidise until the cheapness of labour in road abates (which it can only afford by raising taxes), or if not subsidised then allow the industry to financially collapse.

On that note exactly what is supposedly so different about a 26-32t rigid pulling a 45 ft drawbar trailer as opposed to tractor unit pulling a 45-50 foot semi trailer.

I think when they looked at it, one of the first things they said was that there would be no motorway parking for such long vehicles. Secondly, approved routes would have to be surveyed and adhered to, and road closures might mean such vehicles were dead-ended. Thirdly, (and perhaps particularly because of the route restrictions) there would be insufficient ability to find full capacity return loads.

And ultimately any attempt at solutions for the above would mean higher taxes on road haulage in one way or another to pay for it, which is another factor bearing on road haulage which you wanted reduced.

Or for that matter why would you think that use of those combined with use of red diesel wouldn’t provide a much better chance of increasing wage levels and terms and conditions for drivers.No surprise that UNITE won’t see it that way like you being lumbered with Socialist dogma that keeps truck drivers second class workers v train drivers. :unamused:

The result being that yet again they’ll be left behind in favour of their German counterparts.

youtube.com/watch?v=0xDhKuT1JII

No, I don’t agree that use of red diesel will help anyone, because in the first place the lost taxation will have to be replaced from elsewhere.

More to the point for drivers, the reason for low wages is not high costs!

You don’t seem to have grasped this in my previous post. If the driver is struggling to breathe when trapped under a millstone (which represents market competition and the power of capital versus labour), digging out the ground underneath the driver by eroding costs (which competition also bears upon), will not lead to more room to breathe - the millstone will simply fall under gravity with the driver, exerting the same pressure on the driver’s chest as before, but the price the customer has to pay can now drop a little bit.

How does piggy backing truck trailers and hauling containers,which previously went ‘regularly’ by road,fit the description of ‘regular’ ‘train sized’ loads.Or for that matter we obviously wouldn’t be dealing with any issue of any deliberate stated government policy of large scale ‘shift’ in freight volumes ‘from’ road ‘to’ rail.Which we obviously are.On that note if rail is as efficient as it says it is then it has nothing to fear by allowing trucks better access to those same markets in the form of a leveller playing field regarding fuel costs and efficient vehicle specifications ( LHV’s ).Nor would that issue of stated government transport policy exist.

While so long as it does exist why would anyone with any sense choose to enter the road transport industry given the choice of entering the rail transport industry instead.While road transport will obviously increasingly be seen as the second class,second choice with drivers treated and paid in line with that situation.

Given a situation of equal unionisation between rail and road,in which wage levels are removed from the competitive process for both,that doesn’t fit the definition of ‘under cutting’.While imposition of unfair taxation and ‘unrealistic’ vehicle dimensions and weights,together with a stated government aim of removing road transport’s access to the transport market,certainly does fit the definition of ‘rigging’ the market.Those dimensions and weights being no less unrealistic now than the 32 t gross limit was before the pathetic move to 38 and 44t operation.While the difference in fuel costs regards the two modes speaks for itself.

As for the lost tax revenues from trucks’ use of red diesel yes they will need to be made up from an increase in central taxation like income tax.Rather than regressive VAT and Duty which hits the road transport industry and those employed in it disproportionately.Or for that matter the customers of everything moved by road.On that note I thought Labour was all about taxation based on the ability to pay.Not hitting poor pensioners’ etc grocery bills in the form of passed on road fuel duty. :unamused:

110

Carryfast:

Bluey Circles:
When there has been big reductions in the cost of diesel, such as last years price collapse; What was the most common outcome.
a) wages went up
b) rates for transporting goods went down (usually set by the company sending the goods)

The cost of diesel have very little impact on drivers wage packets.

To be fair going from silly price down to a bit less but still silly price,which certainly couldn’t be called a price ‘collapse’,was never going to provide the scope for wage increases which allowing trucks to use red diesel would. :bulb:

Utter rubbish. Haulage prices are not too high. They are too low! Customers are paying too little, relative to the cost of providing a proper, lawful haulage service with adequate wages.

111

Rjan:

Carryfast:
We’re discussing a world in which truck drivers learn the meaning of solidarity just like their train driver counterparts.In which case a massive reduction in fuel costs ‘can’ then be translated into increased wages for drivers.

But solidarity must come first. Our economic productivity has actually increased for 40 years, but the proceeds have been almost exclusively captured by the rich, as well as consumed by the burdens of competition (i.e. workers may be more productive, but they now have to pay huge amounts for things that do not improve their wellbeing, such as the advertising of washing powder, or put lots of unpaid time into things that are scientifically shown to reduce wellbeing like comparing markets or comparing too many almost-equivalent products).

But what won’t work is solidarity trying to do same against the status quo of unproductive vehicle length and weight limits combined with extortionate levels of road fuel taxation.

On the contrary, solidarity is exactly what will work in workers taking back our fair share of the pie we help create. There is no shortage of pie overall; the rich have never been richer.

On that note I’m guessing you mean treble the rate of road fuel duty not the cost of fuel.In which case go for it and see what happens to what remains of the road transport industry and the motor industry/trade.

You should know the answer to this Carryfast. Nothing will happen to road transport if fuel costs triple. It will just be passed straight on to customers, and much the same goods will get moved as before but at higher prices.

If there’s no ‘shortage’ of any so called ‘pie’ you obviously wouldn’t be moaning about truck drivers supposedly taking the livelihoods from train drivers,given a leveller playing field in the form of LHV’s and equalisation of fuel costs.IE you say one thing when it suits you and the opposite when it doesn’t.

In which case as I said go for it.Follow Bluey Circles’ idea of trebling road fuel taxation and see what happens not only to the road transport industry but the economy in general.While remaining with the staus quo of 40/44t max on standard length trucks.Here’s a clue there won’t be much point then in truck drivers joining Unite and calling on employers for a £15 per hour minimum wage for C + E. :unamused:

112

Rjan:

Carryfast:

Bluey Circles:
When there has been big reductions in the cost of diesel, such as last years price collapse; What was the most common outcome.
a) wages went up
b) rates for transporting goods went down (usually set by the company sending the goods)

The cost of diesel have very little impact on drivers wage packets.

To be fair going from silly price down to a bit less but still silly price,which certainly couldn’t be called a price ‘collapse’,was never going to provide the scope for wage increases which allowing trucks to use red diesel would. :bulb:

Utter rubbish. Haulage prices are not too high. They are too low! Customers are paying too little, relative to the cost of providing a proper, lawful haulage service with adequate wages.

Let’s get this right you want the status quo of artificially imposed extortionate fuel costs.Let alone a massive increase in road fuel taxation.Together with truck driver’s wages,then just pass the costs on to the customer who’ll be falling over themselves to pay it.At best that’s the definition of inflation at worst you’re going to end up with a lot of pished off out of work drivers when even more of what remains of the industry gets transferred to the rail sector.

113

Winseer:
Has anyone ever seen any serious management with regards to simply using the right vehicle for the right job?

You’ve got trucks delivering fresh air one way all the time, artics with 4 pallets on them, 17tonners sent into 6’6" streets by mistake, and 7.5tonners sent to pick up one item like a generator that weights five tonnes…

Not being able to save some money there, - they’ll no doubt cut T&Cs of drivers, cut hourly rates, cut use of agency for “longer” shifts, not realizing you lose more money getting an agency to do a 5 hour job paid minimum 8 hours for, and of course - cut overtime.

I wonder if TMs need to be taught how to BE TMs. :unamused:

That’s the fault of people promising things to customers when they know they don’t have the fleet to do it but will still try. At our place we had a flooring contract that saw us take 26tonners into London to handball off tons of the stuff. Every time the paper would ask for a small Larry yet they’d still send it in a 26tonner because they could get other stuff on. I had about 15 or so of these before we ditched the contract, out of those 15 I think I managed to get 3 off. The rest I couldn’t reach so I was told “begrudgingly” to take it to Palletways in Greenford.

The best one though is we got the contract to run goods to a very large car maker, we had new trailers ordered especially for it. Someone though messed up and got the wrong ones, these new ones won’t fit on the bay’s there. About a 100 , maybe more were ordered, everyone is the wrong sort.

114

Carryfast:
If there’s no ‘shortage’ of any so called ‘pie’ you obviously wouldn’t be moaning about truck drivers supposedly taking the livelihoods from train drivers

Indeed, my objection is that we would be stealing pie from other workers (rather than stealing pie from the rich), and that a shift from rail to road is actually an anti-productivity measure which will ‘shrink the pie’.

Do workers suffering in all the advanced economies around the world really believe that they are suffering because train drivers have too much of the pie, rather than because the rich have too much of the pie?

Moreover, attacking railwaymen may simply help the rail industry attack its own workers’ wages, which would simply leave rail back winning the competition with road haulage, but with the destruction of a part of the working class that has developed the mentality which road haulage needs to emulate.

Finally, even if you felt that train drivers were overpaid for shift work (and personally I do not), attempting to redress that would be a long way down our proper order of priorities - it’s like shooting the man in the trench next to you because he maybe took too much bread at dinner, in preference to focussing on the opponent you are supposed to be fighting.

given a leveller playing field in the form of LHV’s and equalisation of fuel costs.IE you say one thing when it suits you and the opposite when it doesn’t.

I don’t agree that it is a level playing field.

It will be when truck drivers are earning £45k a year with final salary pensions (with £22k a year whilst in training), so let’s start with that, and once we’re there, we’ll look again at whether LHV is a competitive option to rail, or whether the question becomes moot.

In which case as I said go for it.Follow Bluey Circles’ idea of trebling road fuel taxation and see what happens not only to the road transport industry but the economy in general.While remaining with the staus quo of 40/44t max on standard length trucks.Here’s a clue there won’t be much point then in truck drivers joining Unite and calling on employers for a £15 per hour minimum wage for C + E. :unamused:

As I’ve said, I predict nothing will happen as a result of a trebling of fuel costs, except that hauliers will suffer a crisis of profits until they are able and willing to pass on the increase to their customers.

The British economy is not suffering a crisis of productivity which would explain why truckers’ wages have halved or more in real terms over 20-30 years. Indeed, no crisis of productivity explains why Tesco or whatever outsource to Stobarts with their drivers on cheaper pay and conditions. It’s not productivity that forces these processes, it’s simply mutual competition (in the Tesco case, competition amongst several supermarkets) and greed for profit for its own sake (by a managerial class who frequently receive pay rises and promotions for forcing down workers’ wages).

The structural effect of this, as you know, is a crisis of effective demand (or, at first, a spiralling of personal debt). Workers unions can provide the structural counter-pressure to competition for profit, because workers stand together and do not compete to reduce each other’s wages.

In Henry Ford’s case, part of his reason for paying high wages was to avoid actual unionisation, and partly because he did understand the structural consequences for his firm if he engaged in a wage war with his competitors, and because his only competitors had similar understandings and were under similar constraints. The average CEO today knows nothing about macroeconomics, but they do know that profits surge every time they attack the workforce (even if doing so eventually kills the economic system on which they depend).

115

Carryfast:
Let’s get this right you want the status quo of artificially imposed extortionate fuel costs.Let alone a massive increase in road fuel taxation.Together with truck driver’s wages,then just pass the costs on to the customer who’ll be falling over themselves to pay it.

Customers don’t have to choose to pay higher prices. They are not given the option, unless they want to wind down their operations altogether - and the reality is, Tesco will not wind up its operation and abandon all its capital investment, just because truck driver’s ask for the average hourly wage plus unsociable hours premiums.

At best that’s the definition of inflation at worst you’re going to end up with a lot of pished off out of work drivers when even more of what remains of the industry gets transferred to the rail sector.

We currently have a serious underlying problem with deflation! The printing presses at the BoE whirr day and night to keep the inflation rate up!

Wage inflation is not necessarily followed by price inflation. It can be followed by profit deflation (which is the whole point of the exercise), and it can also spur huge capital investment and labour time productivity improvements (which is good for everybody).

From 1945-70, that is basically what happened - profit’s share of the pie fell, and what little it clung onto was driven by aggressive real productivity improvements (i.e. labour time improvements which improve our standard of living relative to our effort, not labour cost improvements which can be achieved just by forcing down wages for the same effort as before).

It was only in the 1970s, given that there was a crisis of profits and little more to do immediately on the productivity front, and given the sheer strength that workers had achieved, that further wage demands then led purely to consumer price inflation (and, if history totally repeated itself, then that would only happen 30 years from now, on the other side of a capitalist boom the likes of which the world has never seen before).

116

Rjan:

Carryfast:
On that note if truck driving is to be given the same status as train driving and made more productive we need a level trading field in the form of the most efficient vehicles possible and fuel cost regime.If not then don’t be surprised when prospective new drivers walk away from the industry because they don’t want to be lumbered with the typical zb distribution sector type work that’s left at any wage,let alone minimum wage.While on that note spare us from such hypocritical utter zb.

We should not be trying to take food out of the mouth of rail and rail workers. If you want what they have, then join the rail industry.

Truckers should be focussing on getting good rates for what rail cannot do (including flexible scheduling and fine-grained access to premises by road), not trying to deconsolidate, demechanise, and disorganise the transport industry by moving baseline rail work onto the road, and in the meantime undercutting guys who often have the wages and job security that we all want (and which they got not by undercutting truckers, but by railwaymen standing together not only amongst themselves - as the Southern Rail strike shows - but often in the past standing together with those in other industries too).

join the rail industry,thats a laugh,its a closed shop,both brothers work on the rails,the younger brother got my nephew an interview,my nephew was worried he may not get the job,my brother said not to worry its as good as yours,one of his mates was on the interview panel,sure enough he got it,now been there nearly 10 years

117

Rjan:

Carryfast:
Let’s get this right you want the status quo of artificially imposed extortionate fuel costs.Let alone a massive increase in road fuel taxation.Together with truck driver’s wages,then just pass the costs on to the customer who’ll be falling over themselves to pay it.

Customers don’t have to choose to pay higher prices. They are not given the option, unless they want to wind down their operations altogether - and the reality is, Tesco will not wind up its operation and abandon all its capital investment, just because truck driver’s ask for the average hourly wage plus unsociable hours premiums.

At best that’s the definition of inflation at worst you’re going to end up with a lot of pished off out of work drivers when even more of what remains of the industry gets transferred to the rail sector.

We currently have a serious underlying problem with deflation! The printing presses at the BoE whirr day and night to keep the inflation rate up!

Wage inflation is not necessarily followed by price inflation. It can be followed by profit deflation (which is the whole point of the exercise), and it can also spur huge capital investment and labour time productivity improvements (which is good for everybody).

From 1945-70, that is basically what happened - profit’s share of the pie fell, and what little it clung onto was driven by aggressive real productivity improvements (i.e. labour time improvements which improve our standard of living relative to our effort, not labour cost improvements which can be achieved just by forcing down wages for the same effort as before).

It was only in the 1970s, given that there was a crisis of profits and little more to do immediately on the productivity front, and given the sheer strength that workers had achieved, that further wage demands then led purely to consumer price inflation (and, if history totally repeated itself, then that would only happen 30 years from now, on the other side of a capitalist boom the likes of which the world has never seen before).

Firstly we’re not talking about general inflation.We’re talking about an unsustainable inflationary cycle that just affects the road transport industry.

In that firstly it’s already paying too much for its fuel costs as a proportion of its cost base and relative to the amount it can haul in terms of tonne/miles of freight.In addition to the fact that it can’t survive on just the arguable possibility of serving a supposedly captive supermarket customer base.

In which case your idea is to remove more work from within the long haul road haulage sectors like containers,trunking and international work etc etc thereby reducing demand for drivers in those sectors.Just leaving a few captive markets of the local distribution sectors which many drivers don’t even want to work in anyway.Against that background you then also want a train driver wage regime for truck drivers ( presumably meaning C + E ? ).What could possibly go wrong.Bearing in mind that no one is going to pay anyone £45,000 pa to drive an 18 or even 7.5 tonner around the houses or a few miles up the road and you’ve effectively priced C + E vehicles and their drivers out of the market at that point.IE with a few exceptions like STGO it then just ain’t worth operating C + E vehicles in the environment you’ve created.Which probably explains why the agencies are already mostly all about zb 7.5 or 18 tonner distribution etc type zb work that no one with any sense wants to do. :unamused:

The fact is,without a move to LHV’s and a massive reduction in the unfair fuel cost burden on the road transport industry and with it access to decent quality distance work,few prospective drivers with any sense are going to choose driving a truck over driving a train.That’s assuming they even want to bother with driving anything at all at that point bearing in mind the limitations on and even worse elitist nature of train driver recruitment and career progression.

118

truckman020:
join the rail industry,thats a laugh,its a closed shop,both brothers work on the rails,the younger brother got my nephew an interview,my nephew was worried he may not get the job,my brother said not to worry its as good as yours,one of his mates was on the interview panel,sure enough he got it,now been there nearly 10 years

If it’s a closed shop (and trucking is little different in this respect), then it sounds like your family have a foot in both!

119

Carryfast:
Firstly we’re not talking about general inflation.We’re talking about an unsustainable inflationary cycle that just affects the road transport industry.

How can you have an inflationary cycle in road haulage? Drivers are not, broadly, the consumers of road haulage, and their wage demands are not driven by the price of road haulage they buy (if any).

If drivers’ wages are doubled, road haulage prices might go up say 20% (because drivers’ wages are not the entire cost of haulage services), and prices in the shops will hardly move (because the cost of road haulage is not the entire cost of shop-bought goods) - there is no feedback loop as in the 1970s, where every worker demand a pay rise, which then caused all goods to increase in price, which then caused every worker to demand another pay rise (which is what the unions had been doing all through the 1960s, but by the early 70s there was no other outlet for the wage demands in terms of profit decreases or productivity improvements).

In that firstly it’s already paying too much for its fuel costs as a proportion of its cost base and relative to the amount it can haul in terms of tonne/miles of freight.In addition to the fact that it can’t survive on just the arguable possibility of serving a supposedly captive supermarket customer base.

How can you not survive on a captive market? :laughing:

In which case your idea is to remove more work from within the long haul road haulage sectors like containers,trunking and international work etc etc thereby reducing demand for drivers in those sectors.

I really don’t have any specific view on this Carryfast. It seems to me there will still be a need for road haulage to and from premises not served by rail connections, and for relatively low-volume/irregular long-haul movements.

I was really just drawn to rebut your bunkum about the market being rigged for rail. If anything it is the road haulage market, with it’s comparative dirt-poor pay and conditions, that is rigged to try and undercut rail, and having squeezed wages to rock bottom and thrown many drivers onto social security like tax credits, the whole industry demands to suckle further at the taxpayer’s teet and receive yet more tax breaks, purely for the reason of undercutting a transport mode that is already high-pay and high-productivity.

Just leaving a few captive markets of the local distribution sectors which many drivers don’t even want to work in anyway.Against that background you then also want a train driver wage regime for truck drivers ( presumably meaning C + E ? ).What could possibly go wrong.Bearing in mind that no one is going to pay anyone £45,000 pa to drive an 18 or even 7.5 tonner around the houses or a few miles up the road and you’ve effectively priced C + E vehicles and their drivers out of the market at that point.

No one would pay train drivers £45k per annum with a final salary pension, if the train drivers didn’t ensure that the employers had no choice about the matter.

120

Rjan:

Carryfast:
Firstly we’re not talking about general inflation.We’re talking about an unsustainable inflationary cycle that just affects the road transport industry.

How can you have an inflationary cycle in road haulage? Drivers are not, broadly, the consumers of road haulage, and their wage demands are not driven by the price of road haulage they buy (if any).

If drivers’ wages are doubled, road haulage prices might go up say 20% (because drivers’ wages are not the entire cost of haulage services), and prices in the shops will hardly move (because the cost of road haulage is not the entire cost of shop-bought goods) - there is no feedback loop as in the 1970s, where every worker demand a pay rise, which then caused all goods to increase in price, which then caused every worker to demand another pay rise (which is what the unions had been doing all through the 1960s, but by the early 70s there was no other outlet for the wage demands in terms of profit decreases or productivity improvements).

In that firstly it’s already paying too much for its fuel costs as a proportion of its cost base and relative to the amount it can haul in terms of tonne/miles of freight.In addition to the fact that it can’t survive on just the arguable possibility of serving a supposedly captive supermarket customer base.

How can you not survive on a captive market? :laughing:

In which case your idea is to remove more work from within the long haul road haulage sectors like containers,trunking and international work etc etc thereby reducing demand for drivers in those sectors.

I really don’t have any specific view on this Carryfast. It seems to me there will still be a need for road haulage to and from premises not served by rail connections, and for relatively low-volume/irregular long-haul movements.

I was really just drawn to rebut your bunkum about the market being rigged for rail. If anything it is the road haulage market, with it’s comparative dirt-poor pay and conditions, that is rigged to try and undercut rail, and having squeezed wages to rock bottom and thrown many drivers onto social security like tax credits, the whole industry demands to suckle further at the taxpayer’s teet and receive yet more tax breaks, purely for the reason of undercutting a transport mode that is already high-pay and high-productivity.

Just leaving a few captive markets of the local distribution sectors which many drivers don’t even want to work in anyway.Against that background you then also want a train driver wage regime for truck drivers ( presumably meaning C + E ? ).What could possibly go wrong.Bearing in mind that no one is going to pay anyone £45,000 pa to drive an 18 or even 7.5 tonner around the houses or a few miles up the road and you’ve effectively priced C + E vehicles and their drivers out of the market at that point.

No one would pay train drivers £45k per annum with a final salary pension, if the train drivers didn’t ensure that the employers had no choice about the matter.

The inflationary ‘cycle’ that I’m referring to is the one where you try to provide drivers with a massive wage increase without at least countering that,in the form of reduced costs ( in this case extortionate fuel taxation ) and increased productivety for the operator.On that note what do you think would have happened to the road transport industry if we’d have kept to the 32t gross limit,40 ft trailers,road fuel duty escalator,together with giving drivers train driver type wages,terms and conditions.That would have worked. :open_mouth: :unamused: Bearing in mind that unsurprisingly it’s only just about surviving having stopped the fuel duty escalator together with a few,almost pointless,token increases in gross weights and vehicle lengths.IE as I said a bleedin hypocritical article by the Grauniad kicking the industry while it’s down.The industry in question having been brought to its knees by the very anti road transport policies that the Grauniad supports. :imp: :unamused:

As for the ‘captive market’ as I said the local/distribution sector alone isn’t the definition of the road transport ‘market’.Without access to which,without the present levels of punitive taxation and over regulation,the industry can’t survive.At least in a way which will provide the productivety and terms and conditions and job opportunities which the industry is being blamed by the Grauniad for not providing.

While you say that you don’t have a view regarding what is plainly obvious.In that the road transport industry is unarguably and gradually being deliberately choked out of any transport market sector which the government sees as being advantageous to the rail sector.Using punitive fuel taxation and unrealistic weight and dimensions limits to do it.You can arguably also add to that issues like road rationing in the form of ‘managed motorways’,unwarranted lane/road closures,and speed limiters set below the National Speed Limit.