Flagship tippers seized for running on red diesel
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by Charles Young • A haulier who boasted his trucks were good for the firm's image and "good on fuel" had two of them confiscated last week for using red diesel.
Marcus Clay from Tamworth-based MAC Contracting paid "a substantial sum" to recover his beloved bonneted Scanias with personalised plates after they were seized by Customs officers.
Last year he told a reporter who was profiling his company: "I feel they're the best vehicles. They seem to be the most expensive, but you get what you pay for. It's also to do with image—not many tipper corn
panies run Scanias—and they're good on fuel."
Clay paid the money immediately and will not be appealing. "It's something I'm very ashamed of and it won't happen again," he says. "It's kicked away everything we've achieved. We had a couple of very slow payers and a customer that went bust on us and we made the mistake of trying to change things by using the red.
"It was used as a temporary measure over Christmas as we knew we were going to suffer over the next couple of weeks," he adds. "It's a very cut-throat business but we should have looked at other angles."