LETTER OF THE WEEK
Page 13
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Never forget the need to pay for sustainable rates
I AGREE wholeheartedly with the need for commercially sustainable haulage rates that is expressed by your operator panel (“Fuel for thought,” CM 16 August).
The Road Haulage Association (RHA) has been publicly campaigning for adequate haulage rates to be bid for and accepted for years – although that subject is of much less interest to the media than lobbying against increases in fuel duty.
We have been promoting the linking of rates to the price of fuel and providing a tool for doing so with the RHA Weekly Fuel Price survey, which is used by many members for charging customers.
We have also stressed several times that diesel is far from the only cost to have been rising – a point customers are inclined to ignore – and that new investment has to be paid for, as rail passengers are finding out.
None of that should diminish the achievement of FairFuelUK’s award-winning campaign which, given the reality of the industry and the wider economy, has stopped further damaging erosions of profit and cash flow.
But hauliers should never forget the need to get customers to pay sustainable rates – and the RHA never has.
Jack Semple Director of policy Road Haulage Association