SALT AWAY SOME CASH
Page 49
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the last Driving for Profit I entioned a growing need to 'prove the payload capably of my truck. As the years opt (or flew by depending how old you are) it had 'come increasingly difficult make the sort of profits I lquired to be able to salt Nay sufficient cash to take mount of inflation, a point I to often overlooked by wner-drivers.
In 1963 an eight-wheel rigid ir 24 tons gross was costing ist about £4,500 on the road. i today's inflated market the quivalent machine, a 0-ton-gross vehicle, would set Du back about £21,000.
That means for one ton of ayload capacity in 1963 you aid approximately £128 and )day for one ton of payload apacity you would pay pproximately £1,050 or a little ver eight times as much.
Admittedly vehicles are a bit etter; they need to be when ne thinks of the cost of repairs. tut it still means that you have D earn eight times as much just D account for the current cost if your vehicle.
Think ahead, say, five years o when you are about to eplace today's £21,000 barJain. By that time you are quite ikely — even taking Dennis iealey's ultra-optimistic view of low inflation will go -to be )aying at least an extra £7,000 or the same vehicle. So that is he sort of vehicle cost we must Pe depreciating on, not what we Paid for this year's model.
Even the world's cleverest crystal gazer is not really able to Forecast inflation correctly because so many outside influences have an effect on what happens. The last people Ne should take notice of are the politicians, because while one section is forecasting the inflation figure another is busy passing legislation to make nonsense of the forecast.
That all leaves the haulier, large or small, with the need to be more profitable.
Customers are, in my experience, loath to part with an extra few pence per ton except when there is a fuel cost increase.
Talk to them about higher repair costs or insurance premiums or
even increased excise licence fees and its ten to one that you meet with a blank look and a remark like, -Well we are all facing increased costs.'"
That was the situation that was beginning to confront me in my own one-vehicle fleet. I had looked at every conceivable means of cutting operating costs. So far by far the best method had been to speed up my operations, although of course to make that work you need a surplus of traffic and quite naturally wear and tear costs increase slightly.
After exhausting all avenues I had to admit that the old eight-wheeler was no longer a profitable beast. It was only 24 tons gross and carried 16% tons of payload. Twenty tons of payload would on the face of things produce an extra 25 per cent of revenue but I was well aware that even at 161/4 tons about 22 per cent of my work was capacity loads which did not in fact take up more than 70 per cent of the available payload capacity.
I was doing some container traffic but was restricted to one 20ft unit which could not be up to maximum gross weight. It represented about 5 per cent of my work. I had quite a lot of packaged timber which I knew
came in modules of 2 tons and so could easily be made up to 20 tons. It represented 15 per cent of the total work.
Some of my work, about 18 per cent of the total, took me off the road. I had held this particular contract ever since I had started and was not inclined to give it up lightly, for my customer was fair and reasonable in his dealings with me. The off-road part of his jobs were not over virgin land, but no way would I get into a good 50 per cent of the delivery points with a 40ft semi-trailer.
Nevertheless, somehow I had to get up to 32 tons gross in order to get my extra payload because the remaining 40 per cent of my work was made up of spot-hire traffic which could be any weight of any commodity.
After much heart searching I decided to settle for a little used but extremely flexible outfit which offered me a clear 22 tons of payload and 44ft of deck space. It took the form of a 24-ton 6x2 with a load transfer device on the rear bogie and a lightweight 20ft-long drawbar trailer.
Both units are equipped with twistlocks and the maximum gross container weights I can manage are 16 tons and 6 tons. This permits me to get two capacity loaded boxes on, or one reasonable loaded box with one empty.
Being able to leave the drawbar at some distant point cuts down the entry restrictions that could have occurred with a 40ft artic and it also reduces the effect if the additional speed restriction under A-road operation when drawing the trailer.
I suppose that on some occasion in the future I will regret not having stuck to my double drive back-end, but it was a case of getting my priorities right.
Another advantage I have gained is that in three of my regular delivery points I am able to get the truck off-loaded and then leave the trailer to be off loaded while I re-load the truck. This way I achieve the same turn-round time that I did with the old eight-wheeler plus the loading time for the trailer and I am shifting 44 tons of payload instead of 32 tons in a round trip.
There are snage, of course. Not as some might think because of maneouvrability problems, for in this direction a good nosing-hook works wonders. Taking all things into consideration, though, the outfit is paying off and I think I have made the right move.