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Smaller firms fight for survival
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Has the recession hit the smallest hauliers the hardest? CM finds out if they are fighting for nothing.
HARD TIMES ARE much harder for some than for others.
In the road transport business, there is a persistent belief that the recession has damaged smaller hauliers more than almost anybody else.
One reason that smaller firms are finding it so tough may be that they have fewer resources on which to call upon to ride out the financial crisis.
Larger hauliers certainly have a big advantage in their ability to buy fuel in bulk, says Jo Tanner, the Freight Transport Association's (FTA) director of communications,
She adds: "We've heard that smaller operators with less wriggle room are struggling to compete with larger players and, in the face of increased transport costs and lower activity levels, are facing uncertain futures.
Resilience
However, small hauliers are a famously tough breed, and although times may he tough, they are very resilient, says Jack Semple, director of policy at the Road Haulage Association (RHA).
Semple says that businesses of all sizes are suffering, adding that he is "very wary of generalising" about which parts of the industry are suffering more than others.
But he does reveal that the RHA has received a "very heavy" number of enquiries from members asking about how to carry out redundancies.
Semple adds that one reason some smaller hauliers are suffering is that the bigger hauliers stop using subcontractors when work dries up. Since smaller operators often work for larger ones, their work is frequently the first to get the chop.
Few small hauliers would deny the challenges the recession has presented, yet many demonstrate the impressive resilience to which Semple refers.
Adapt to survive
Andy Cocks, director of AJ Cocks Transport of Westbury. Wiltshire, admits the first six months of this year were a "nightmare': but the firm has adapted its business to new realities.
At the beginning of 2008, much of AJ Cocks' business involved working for Aggregate Industries, but TDG now handles that. Cocks could have chosen to try to subcontract for TDG, but decided to diversify instead, picking up work in a variety of areas.
These include carrying containers to and from some of the big ports, carrying waste food from factories to plants that use it to generate electricity, and carrying generators to concerts. If adaptability is one of the keys to surviving a recession, then Cocks is a fine example.
Things still haven't been easy, though, with Cocks choosing not to replace one employee who retired last September and another who left at Christmas, hut given the carnage happening in much of the haulage industry, the firm has done well.
It still provides work for Cocks himself, plus three others to drive its four artics and a single 75-tormer.
Cocks says: "I'm not saying it hasn't been a struggle, but we have managed to hold our heads above water."
Determination
There are some small hauliers speaking hopefully of the beginning of the end of the recession, but there are plenty of others who remain cautious about making such predictions.
The notion that the recession is nearly over gets a glum response from Leeds-based haulier John Knowles, the oiler of F Knowles & Son,
'1 don't think the recession is over now, and I don't think it will be over in 12 months' time," he says.
However, as the case studies in this report demonstrate, the experiences of the UK's smaller hauliers will ring true across the land, but so does the sheer doggedness of their approach and their steadfast refusal to buckle.
And that's probably where the best hope lies for Britain's smaller hauliers and army of owner-drivers: a steely determination to carry on, get around the difficult bends and climb back into the sunshine of a recovery._ when it finally arrives. II
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