Unhappy haulage 'in low spirits'
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HAULIERS throughout the country are "in low spirits," according to a special report published in the Financial Times this week.
Reasons put forward for the apparent depressed state of the industry are many. They include problems connected with the current pay guidelines, the introduction of EEC legislation, increased vehicle taxation, tariffs, and probably worst of all — inflation and what it has done to replacement costs.
The report says the industry has lost its argument with the Government that lorries are overtaxed, "and it has lost the last vestiges of any ability for central guidance on tariffs."
But it is inflation that has hit everyone without exception in the road haulage business.
Hauliers are said to be punch-drunk over replacements costs and the effect inflation has on them.
The increase in the cost of heavy lorries and spares is said to have risen by between 150 and 200 per cent in the last six years.
Reporting that industry's leaders doubt whether hauliers' charges are keeping pace with inflation, the report asks how small hauliers can survive.
One suggestion is that corners have been cut on everything from maintenance to payrolls.
In 1976 only 400 hauliers out of a possible 40,000 went bankrupt.
Pay problems could also turn out to be a killer for some of the smaller hauliers.
"What some in the industry fear" the report goes on to say, "is that the present unrest on pay — and even those employers who have settled will not rest easy that they can count on holding that settlement for a year if the guidelines are substantially overturned elsewhere — will push some hauliers over the edge."
Current replacement costs, pay/price restraint and EEC legislation was together recently described collectively by Road Haulage Association national vice-chairman John Silberman as "the most serious peace-time threat to Britain's road haulage industry".
With higher excise duty on the heaviest lorries a pretty firm prediction for the next Budget, what hauliers want in return, the report concludes, is compensation, This hauliers would hope would be in the form of increased maximum vehicle weights. To a lesser degree, hauliers may well urge a rethink of the cuts in the roadbuilding budget.