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The hardest road
Page 9
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Barry Proctor says that it's operators themselves who will determine the success of our industry in the face of ludicrous legislation and inept planning....
I recently sat in a meeting where yet another survey of transport plans was discussed. My own thoughts were that it was a waste of time and money. This sort of work is farmed out to consultancies, which inevitably take months to come up with a report which fails to address the real problems. Yet there are simple schemes that would work but are never tried. Meanwhile no-one seems to question the mindless decisions being made.
Well, not every one. My friend Geoff Martin. who runs Geoff Martin Transport, is demanding some answers about the inconsistencies in the Working Time Directive. And a party of 20 of us will be going to the Commons on 9 February to lobby for changes.
Many hauliers are burying their heads in the sand over the WTD, hoping it won't happen. Believe me, it will. What's more, I think the trade associations have accepted this fact.
So we will be lobbying the government to scrap the optout clause for the self-employed. I have a friend who owns a removal firm and runs three vehicles. He will come under V./TD legislation, but his competitors — one-man bands — are excluded. How can he hope to compete?
We will also demand funding to address the driver shortage now, because when the WTD bites it will be too late. Couple all this with road congestion and you have a looming disaster MPe are not willing to address.
I am not advocating 70-hour weeks, but I think we can control drivers' hours adequately through the existing hours' regulations w.rthout recourse to social legislation.
Geoff is also organising a trip to Belgium in April so that we can lobby MEPs on this subject. We need people like Geoff to stand and fight instead of accepting legislation that will effectively determine who stays in business and who loses his job.
At the end of the day it will be operators, not the trade associations, who will decide our future. 1 think we can control driven hours adequatel existing regulations with recourse to social legisla