Scottish slump hits hard
Page 11
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
• The collapse of the Scottish steel industry has hit Scottish hauliers hard with many reporting cutbacks in vehicles and drivers following last month's closures at Ravenscraig and Clydesdale.
The massive hot strip mill at Ravenscraig, Lanarkshire, and the Clydesdale tube works closed on 1 April. Ravenscraig continues to produce steel slabs but the workforce of 3,000 will be slashed to 1,100. Tennant Transport of Lanark has just taken its last loads out of Ravenscraig — the work employed two lorries full-time, but at its peak in the mid-sixties Tennant had 12 lorries running out of the steel mill.
Tennant has found other work in construction but points to the effect on Scottish haulage of losing the steel work: "It's not as if there's anything to replace it," says chief accountant Graham Sorbie, "the work has gone completely."
Billy Walker Transport has lost £40,000 a month with the closure of the Ravenscraig hot strip mill, which makes steel coil, and the Clydesdale tube works. "We have laid off six drivers," says boss Billy Walker, "so we have got to find other work — we had 10 to 20 lorries a day going into both plants. Scottish hauliers have become a forgotten story."
Walker claims that British Steel has given work on Clyde Bridge to an English haulage firm. He is now considering moving his business into England to bid for work south of the border. "It's a case of survival," he says, Yuill & Dodds hauls coal from Hunterson docks to Ravenscraig for the furnaces — this has dropped to a maximum of three loads a week, "Up in Scotland road haulage is a waste of time," says Jimmy Yuill, "it's a dead business — there's nothing lucrative in it any more."
Yuill adds that 90% of loads are heading north; his one southern run is a delivery of supermarket fridges.
Some of the steel work lost in Scotland has been transferred to plants in South Wales, but British Steel cannot confirm that Welsh hauliers will benefit: "It depends on the state of the market," it says.