Farm and market ills are extra burdens for rural hauliers
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HAULIERS specializing in agricultural transport are as much dependent on the weather and market price fluctuations as the farmers they serve and recently business has not been brisk. For agricultural hauliers the disastrous sugar beet crop — Caused by a combination of a virus disease and the very wet winter — has been a serious blow. As one contractor told me, there has been plenty of public sympathy and understanding for the 13ritish Sugar Corporation and the farmers. Few spare the same thought for the transport men. In some cases specialized vehicles desinged exclusively for this traffic have been forced off the road.
Unfortunately, it seems, the warm wet winter has detrimentally affected other hauliers, but for different reasons. While the sugar beet trade has been depressed by the conditions, the flower trade, for example, has been so far advanced that the traditional pattern has been disrupted. Flowers from the Vale of Evesham, for example, have been maturing at the same time as those from Cornwall. Normally the two crops do not overlap. The consequence this year has been that other, non-specialist, hauliers have picked up extra business at the expense of the old-established agri-cultural concerns.
Agricultural hauliers have also been less than cheered by the new Covent Garden market which opened in November. With the possibility of a charge for vehicle entry still undecided, many contractors are reluctant to invest heavily in new, specialized vehicles for what may soon become an uneconomic trade.
While the agricultural transport trade has been quiet, most people concerned expect it to pick up soon. The same cannot be said of the livestock carriers. One RHA area secretary estimates that there are only a dozen or so hauliers specializing exclusively in this traffic left in the country. "There are not many young men left in the business", he sai He predicts that abbattoirs will sol have to provide their own transport. there is not enough money in it f; commercial concerns, he says.
One of the biggest difficulties fach the livestock hauliers has been ti spread of seine vesicular diseas. Regulations have been force for a loi time now limiting the movement of pig