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Owner-drivel re banding together

17th March 1978, Page 52
17th March 1978
Page 52
Page 53
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Page 52, 17th March 1978 — Owner-drivel re banding together
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

TOUGH TIMES in the business of owning your own lorry and finding work for it have meant that drivers in some parts of the country have banded together to compete with the giants of the industry.

One group of owner-drivers with this in mind is based in North Humberside and has now :reached a stage where it has opened its own freight office.

North Humberside Owner Drivers' Association started off with two members, George Kelly and Harry Boland, who went out and sold the idea of forming a drivers' co-operative to others in the Hull area.

Now the association has grown and Owner Drivers' Freight Services (Hull) Ltd operates from an office opposite the dock gates in Hull giving all owner-drivers — whether members or not — service at a maximum of 10 per cent commission.

Membership has grown from the original pair — Mr Kelly is now chairman and Mr Boland treasurer of the freight service and the association — to around the 90 mark giving them about 140 vehicles to load from the dockside office.

As Harry Boland tells anyone who asks: "Setting up an association or a freight office is not easy. You have to be dedicated to have a lot of patience."

Patience and dedication for these two men meant laying up their vehicles for five weeks to work on the formation of the association, but now they agree that they are beginning to reap a return on that investment of time.

Meetings of the owner-drivers inevitably lead to discussions on rates and comparisons of commissions charged by various freight clearing houses, and regularising commissions has been one of the objectives of the clearing house.

Mr Boland explained that the Transport and General Workers' Union has defined a clearing house as one which actually carries out less than 45 per cent of the work given to it.

The owner-drivers' office carries at least 50 per cent of the work on members' vehicles and the rest goes out to men who have delivered to the docks or elsewhere in the Hull area and are looking for backloads.

Members of the Hull association pay a commission of five per cent while others pay 10 per cent.

And it is these rates which have much to do with the success of the venture. Both Kelly and Mr Boland have tal to tell of clearing houses charging drivers a third of th( rate for the job plus 10 per ce — it is this that they are avoiding.

Now the office has its own transport manager, Barry Hardy, who is also an executiN director of the outfit with an equal holding of shares with other directors and members.

It is Barry who has been controlling the direction in which the business goes. For the first three months turnove doubled each month and threatened to become a "bubble," but he is now consolidating the business tha is already there in preparation for further expansion later.

"if we were anything but careful this thing could have got out of hand and we would have had cash flow problems and we don't want that," said Mr Hardy.

At the moment the business is aiming for a procedure that will allow drivers to be paid for their work within 28 days.

"We are standing on providing a service," said Mr Kelly, "and that is what we wil do — without breaking the law."

Meanwhile, the association has managed to provide its members with discounts that would make many a large fleet operator envious.

Fuel prices have been slashed from 86p a gallon to around 66p by bulk contract buying. Now the association is to install its own tank on a new yard that has just been acquire( complete with electronic metering and key card access t( the fuel.

Tyres, spares, maintenance and a whole host of other costs have been slashed allowing members the money to install two-way radio systems in their cabs with all the advantages that instant contact nationwide in bring.

Now the dynamic duo is itting about helping others to Yr m association that will offer le same kind of benefits to rivers in other areas. Meetings I Derby, Leicester and Blyth ave been financed by the Hull ien aimed at helping nthusiastic owner-drivers Isewhere to get similar perations off the ground.

But Mr Boland warned: "It's 'body hard work — it just von't come to you they've just lot to get up and get it going. It von't happen overnight it takes ime, but it will come right if ,ou work at it."

They are not entirely iltruistic; both men see advantages for themselves in a system of associations and freight offices like that at Hull when they themselves are in other parts of the country and looking for a back load.

Help from Hull has already given a start to a freight service and association in Bradford where the office opened on March 6 and another groups seems set to get under way in Leicester with another in the Nottingham area.

Hull member Geoff Watson put the position in a nutshell. "Basically it's a question of fair do's for everyone and we're pretty confident about the future,he said.

He agreed that a national network of such centres is the only way that the owner-drive is going to succeed in the future. "The sooner we get talking about it the better," he said.

For Geoff, much the same as for other drivers, the main advantage is in the availability of return loads and he reckons that he must have at least two return loads a week to make the operation viable.

And with Barry Hardy, Jean Hodgson and Lynn Taylor in the office providing return loads is no problem. They have been faced with the problems of rejecting work in order to keep Barry's policy of consolidation operating.

In Hull the owner-driver is seen as the product which must be sold to the customer — and they see that product as a very saleable item which is reliable and professional and it is obvious that the owners of over 1,000 tons of freight a week that passes through the office agree with the drivers themselves.

But Hull is not the only place where this kind of operation is in being. Sheerness Hauliers Association has been fighting off attempts to black it by the clearing houses and still manages to rind work for its 21 members.

SHA chairman David Murphy said recently that his association had been compelled to level all rates at the round 10 per cent in order to pay for a new yard, but here too the members have acquired ,discounts and are operating as a co-operative.

The Hull men are planning to plough back profits into the business, buying trailers for members and improving facilities.

Most of the associations that are starting up are financed by the members who are issued with shares and in some cases make a cash loan to the company.

At Bradford the newly :formed association financed its operations with each member producing £100. Of this £10 was for shares at £1 each and the other £90 was in the form of a cash loan to the new company.

If the operation is successful then the members stand to be issued with another 90 shares — but that is over the long term.

Harry Boland and George Kelly are the first to admit that their company got going because of the generosity of some drivers who told them that they could run for a while without being paid to give the new firm a start.

But that kind of generosity is now not necessary thanks to the actions of -our professional"' Barry Hardy, who has turned the company into a correctly run, viable

proposition.

Now the two established associations look as though they are set fair to get on with the job of serving their members and those of other associations as they form.

It is the intention of most involved in this kind of co-operative operation to form a national body to co-ordinate activities and there have been meetings between the interested parties to talk about setting one up.

Now it seems as if this will be postponed until more associations have been formed and around a dozen delegates from around the country can sit down to talk things out. Among the objects of such an organisation would be mutual help for members of the various local associations when they are in each other's areas — and for the future of the owner-driver this kind of organisation must be of prime importance.

• Stephen Geary


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