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I read the article quoting Mr John Silbermann, director of Brent Group and national-vice-chairman of the RHA (CM August 12).
You invited readers' views for publication and, with regard to responsible, honest operators' costs, profits and overheads, I will accept his figures.
I will also accept smaller firms cutting rates. Most certainly, we have one-vehicle owners running on a shoestring.
However, the categorization of Mr Nice, Mr Naughty and Mr Nasty is way off the truth.
I do not know in which area Mr Silbermann's group operates. However, I would like to inform him of the area I work in. In Geordieland, in the Northern Traffic Area, large operators like Mr Nice have prospered from humble beginnings.
This has been achieved over the last 25 years through running, and I quote Mr Silbermann, "old unreliable vehicles" and fraudulent calculations of drivers' wages.
"Having their knuckles rapped" by the LA did not, and still does not, deter them as most drivers believe the bigger the haulage firm the less they will be troubled.
Mr Naughty and Mr Nasty are, invariably, drivers who, sickened by the tricks the large outfits get up to, decide to work for themselves.
However, to survive they take sub-contract work; some large firms keep 30 per cent of the rate for the job. These firms may pay lip service to the RHA, but they are unfit to be members. Consequently, after reckoning up their costs, which Mr Silbermann assumes they are incapable of doing, they seek their own work; robbed whilst without work or self-employed is hardly training to be "Mr Nice".
D. CAWLEY, Gateshead.