• by Guy Sheppard Up to 4,000 hauliers are being
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asked to comment on the new sugar beet haulage schedules which will extend delivery times to beet factories by an extra 52 hours a week.
The survey by the Road Haulage Assoclation in its southern and eastern regions follows a meeting in Peterborough last month where nearly 100 members discussed the schedules agreed by British Sugar and the National Farmers Union.
Mike Salmon, RHA East Midlands area manager, says views for and against the schedules were expressed at the meeting. "We will be going forward once we have a true picture of what people think," he adds. "We will be doing the best we possibly can for our membership."
Salmon points out that the RHA has no way of knowing which of its members are involved in sugar beet haulage so it is contacting anyone who may be involved in this work. The resutt of the survey is expected this weekend.
The schedules are likely to be in place from the end of this month; they will require hauliers to deliver during a 16-hour period Monday to Saturday and during a 12-hour period on Sunday (CM 25-31May).
Some hauliers claim that environmental restrictions on their truck movements will prevent them from continuing with this work.
But Michael Dawson, managing director of George R Dawson & Son in Bicker, Lincs, points out that supermarkets receive deliveries 24 hours a day, seven days a week and justin-time deliveries are fast becoming the norm.
"There might be some minuses but there might be some pluses as well," he says. "Until we know the fine detail it is very difficult to give a genuine answer."
Dawson currently devotes eight trucks to beet deliveries.