Anne Preston demands answers on phone-in
Page 11
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• by Ian Wylie North-East haulier Anne Preston took the Chancellor and Prime Minister to task on live radio after last week's preBudget statement, but is optimistic that the government may yet introduce an essential user rebate.
On the morning after Gordon Brown's statement to the Commons, Preston, who is chairman of Preston's of Potto, tackled the Chancellor and Tony Blair on a Radio 5 Live phone-in and demanded to know why the government had ignored the hauliers' plight. .
She told them: "The French and German drivers are coming into the UK with diesel at 30p per litre less than we are paying—that's over Dm more in actual fuel duty that my company pays. It means that I can't compete with these people."
Brown responded by saying that he hoped that the road hauliers' forum, which meets again this week, "will lead to positive proposals that we can look at and implement".
He also claimed that hauliers would benefit from the suspension of the fuel escalator, the freezing of the licence fee 'for 98% of vehicles" and the cut in small business tax.
Blair said: "In the end all these things cost money, you know, and an essential user rebate costs money."
Preston was denied the chance to reply and point out that Road Haulage Association figures show how the rebate could be self-financing. But she has written to Blair and Brown with further arguments supporting the rebate's introduction.
"I'm encouraged they didn't actually say they wouldn't introduce it and the challenge for hauliers is to keep the pressure on via the forum," she says. "We've got to keep battling on."
• See letters, page 22. • High diesel costs and shrinking profit margins have taken their toll on an Ellesmere Port haulage firm which is selling off all its kit.
After 21 years in the business, Springfield Haulage is ceasing trading as a haulier and will sell all its equipment at an auction organised by Malcolm Harrison at the end of this month.
Robert Reynolds, who is involved in the auction for Harrison, says: "It's the same old story. It was becoming more difficult to make a profit, given the cost of diesel."
Reynolds says Harrison is also brokering deals between hauliers who want to opt out of the industry and those who want to buy their way in.
The Springfield auction includes nine tractors registered between 1990 and 1998, plated up to 41 tonnes and geared towards steel haulage.
The auction is at 11:00 on Saturday, 27 November at Springfield Haulage, North Road Industrial Estate, North Road, Ellesmere Port, Wirral.
For more information call 01782 372966.