Trans-Action joins RHA rally
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by David Craik • Trans-Action has cancelled its latest London demonstration planned for Monday 24 August to send a 100-strong convoy to the second Road Haulage Association's "Fair Play on Fuel" rally at Brooklands Aerodrome in Surrey on Saturday 22 August.
Trans-Action member Frank Stears of Faversham-based Frank Stears Haulage says he hopes Trans-Action's trucks will help the rally gain greater media coverage than the one in Gloucester last month (CM 1622 July).
"We will leave Clacketts Lane at 09:30hrs on Saturday morning," he says. "It will not be a go-slow, this is an RHA event."
Stears says a decision will be taken after Brooklands on whether there will be more London convoys.
"We are discussing sending 3,000 hauliers down to Parliament Square to lobby the government," he says. "This means hauliers do not have to take vehicles off the roads for a day."
Roger Wrapson, of the RHA's Southern and Eastern Region, says "between 500 and 600 trucks are expected on the 22nd".
Speeches will be made by Steven Norris, director general of the RHA, Danny Bryan of the Transport and General Workers Union and Bernard Jenkin MP, the Conservatives' transport spokesman.
Contact: 01733 261131. Stears has confirmed fears expressed by the RHA that British hauliers are set to leave the UK due to financial strain (CM13-19 August).
"Most of the hauliers around here will go," he says. "We do not want to but going over to the Continent will save us a fortune."
Stears says he has been offered a place in the yard of one South Eastern operator who is "set to go to France". Others have expressed interest in going to Holland or Southern