A BUMPY RIDE
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I read your report, "150 jobs are lost as Plane goes down" with a great deal of interest. We air-freight hauliers have been working for the same rates (or lower) for some years now. We don't yet know the details of this latest collapse, but I would be surprised if poor rates had nothing to do with it. As a haulier and funeral director, I should like to bring you up to date on my previous comments in CM regarding rates.
Our Daimler hearse is now getting .260 per hour locally, yet our air-freight rollerbed artics, also working locally, are earning less than £17 per hour. A local employment agency has quoted me more than that, just for the driver!
The hearse cost £70,000, the artc about the same. The hearse costs about the same as a car to run, insure and maintain—you know what the lorry costs are. So, once again I ask: who is to blame? It has surely got to be the haulier: inter-airport rates are ludicrously low. Plane's parent, Rutges, was reportedly quoting £650 a load, London to Brussels,just a few weeks ago. The ferry alone costs over £200. In addition, UK interairport rates are worse than 20 years ago! One well known airfreight haulier told me that some of his Customers actually laughed when he suggested a fuel-related increase. Unless hauliers wake up and enter the real world, we are all headed in the same direction as Plane trucking. Rutges Group, I believe, was Europe's largest air-freight haulier. You report expressions of interest in the business. Well, I only hope any would-be air-freight hauliers out there have calculators and a good grasp of costs. There is no easy profit in this business. Wannabes beware! Don't put your head in the clouds.
David Holmes, Director, Holmes of Heathrow.