the maoster:
You make a good point WN, but I think that if the haulage industry grew a pair and said to customer x in Dundee “actually because of the weekend ban your booking slot isn’t viable, we’ll have your load to you at 2pm” . After all, the customer ordered the stuff, they want it, so they’d have to accept legal limitations on transport operations. A bonus would maybe be a return to “normal” shift patterns for drivers instead of ridiculous starts at stupid o clock in the morning.
Or in the real world, the British haulier will just send a Pole, Romanian or whatever driver who lives in a portacabin in the yard or with the end of cabotage, the customer in Dundee will just stop using the British haulier who wont give them what they want and use a foreign company. Either way British drivers will be out of work if they refuse to work when required and a Sunday driving ban would make midnight or 1 and 2am starts the norm as is the case in Germany and other places who operate under this nonsense.
The one thing that will never result from this, would be a return to those golden halcyon days of quality time at home, after doing a nice 5 days work for a decent wage. We’re in the EU, we have open borders and that means we’re up against hundreds of thousands of people who are desperate for our jobs and will do anything to get them, simply because they live in poverty and will put up with things we don’t want to.
Company X in Dundee doesn’t give a crap about you or I, about providing work to British workers, or even Scottish workers, all their bothered about are their own needs, their own profits and running their business at their own convenience. If British haulier X wont do it, if British driver X won’t do it, they can and they will find somebody who will.