Tippers tale
Page 17
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
AROUND 800,000 tipper journeys power stations prevented power ers, it has been disclosed.
At the height of the strike last summer, 20 tonne capacity tip pers were moving huge coal stockpiles and freshly mined Midland coal at the rate of 25,000 movements a week, the National Coal Board has stated.
Most of the operation was organised with around ten big haulage firms which brought in owner drivers and other hauliers from throughout the country, NCB Midlands marketing director Martin Cruttenden told CM.
As the railway unions largely blacked coal movement, com panies such as E and J Meeks, K and M (British Fuel), Reid and Turner, Sherwoods and Bay fords organised a "steadily shifting band" of hauliers. The area was flooded with drivers who worked all week, slept in their cabs and returned home at the weekends. They used CB radio to inform each other of picket attacks, while the NCB tried to divert the miners, he stated.
In total, hauliers carried the vast majority of the 26.5m tonnes of coal delivered during the strike and took 19.5m of it to Trent power stations.
• The major hauliers which acted like clearing agents in the Midlands were raking off at least 10 per cent of the rate of the sub-contracted hauliers, one source has said.