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The big and the small of it
Page 30
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PROFESSOR Alan MacKinnon of Heriot-Watt University does not expect the consolidation of the road transport industry to continue indefinitely: The market is hugely fragmented and will continue to be so."
It seems the biggest threat to ownerdrivers is not fuel duty, as we might suspect, but debt. "There's too much debt in this industry," says Bob Russett. "HP, leasing etc all make single players dependent upon cash flow, not profit. You can run at a loss for a very long time but you only run out of cash once. This makes people prepared to work for low rates rather than stand the truck up."
That's why our successful ownerdrivers all hunt for bargain second-hand trucks.
Roger King warns that many ownerdrivers do not have a full appreciation of operating costs: "They can amortise a cheap truck over four years and so they set their rates cheaply, forgetting the contingencies, like the new clutch or breakdown."