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Magic and autumn madness
Page 66
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A little foresight mixed with a little magic has helped Jason Hamer cope with a busy return to work after the summer shutdown...
It's been a month since I wrote my last dispatch and, boy, have things changed! In August we were dealing with the tail-end of the regular summer factory shutdowns and now we are more than making up for the seasonal trough. September has been a very busy month with companies getting back on plan and sending vehicles all over Europe at a moment's notice.
In one particular instance last week we were coping admirably with our workload when a customer decided that he needed to send two doublemanned units to Munich that afternoon. We like to pride ourselves on never saying no, whatever the circumstances — customers are not interested in hard luck stories and excuses, they just want solutions. Failure to deliver that consignment could have put a factory on stop,so somehow we managed it.
We work closely with our customers to help them plan their urgent export and import loads and avoid this kind of thing. On this occasion, we thought we should explain to the customer that our staff had not attended the 'Harry Potter finishing school and politely enquired whether they had any indication of their work schedule for the following week.
By thinking a few moves ahead, the customer was able to confirm the days on which they would be manufacturing these goods and indicate to us when they would expect to have similar requirements for that week. Problem solved, as if by magic!
Of course we were aware of the increased workload that would follow the summer shutdown and knew it would be virtually impossible to spot-hire trailers. So we used the quiet time in August to buy extra trailers.Again, a little bit of foresight enabled us to avoid problems and maintain quality of service to the customer.
Having said that there is still the problem of finding good drivers to carry out this type of work.We are all aware of the shortage of good quality Class 1 drivers who know their way around Europe,so to show that we appreciate the value of our drivers we awarded them a 10% pay increase last month.
Unfortunately this didn't satisfy everyone. On his first day one driver (who came to us after his two previous employers had both gone into liquidation owing him wages) decided that taking 10 minutes to clean the cab of his assigned vehicle prior to leaving for Germany was beneath him — he promptly went home to find ariotherjob. As a result,at 7pm on a Wednesday night we were left with a load which had to get to Germany for the following morning—and no driver.
Fortunately. with a little reshuffling the job was completed and the customer never knew of these trials and tribulations.
We have just received a fuel increase; not due to arise in the cost of crude oil but another Treasury initiative to boost the government's coffers.The last time fuel started to go up like this we saw the nation grind to a halt.
I am sure that if the general public realised how much hauliers contribute to the Treasury over and above fuel tax they would have a little more sympathy for our trade and not just view us as dirty road-hogs.
Even if our trucks are driven off the road by crippling operating costs. British roads will continue to be the lifeline of manufacturing. However, instead of UK companies fulfilling this service it will be our European counterparts who run on cheaper European fuel and seem to contribute very little to support our infrastructure. •