"About a year ago someone said to me that the
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indigenous UK road haulage industry would be virtually extinct within five years and I scoffed at the idea. Now I am not so sure."
ROBERT COULTHARD, CURRIE EUROPEAN
• Another Scottish firm has also embarked on a flagging out exercise but has gone about it in a slightly different way. The firm is Dumfries-based Currie European Transport, which has only flagged out six of around 200 tractors it operates. These six have been assigned to the firm's existing depot in Holland which has been established for the past 10 years.
The firm also operates from another depot near Paris; it's using these two Continental locations as focal points to subcontract an increasing amount of work to owner-drivers and small firms in Belgium, Holland and France.
"This move has led us to having to lay off some of our domestic staff which we bitterly regret," says European director Robert Coulthard. "Some jobs have gone through natural wastage but there have also been some compulsory redundancies.
"Diesel accounts for about a third of our running costs and if we operate just a British-based operation the elements don't stack up. If we operate a European operation, they do," he adds.
The firm is to review its operation at the end of the month and could decide to flag out more vehicles and carry on the trend of increasingly subcontracting work out to continental drivers.
Currie used to operate a 60:40 ratio of using its own staff as opposed to subcontractors; now this ratio has been reversed-60% of its work is subbed out. And it has just had an enquiry from a Lithuanian operator keen to take on further subcontracting work. "You have to remember that a large number of our customers are suffering from the depressed export market caused by the strong pound," Coulthard explains. "If we can help them by saving 2100 a journey then that is what we have to do."
The continental tractors pull some of the firm's 900 trailers and this can cause some problems with the local police, who are suspicious of what is obviously a British truck sporting continental plates.
"This means that we have to ensure all our documentation is kept up to scratch," says Coulthard.
Currie is also developing its business on the Continent. A couple of years ago 90% of the work handled by its Dutch depot involved trips to the UK; now that is down to nearer 50%.
"Even if the Government stepped in now and enacted a number of measures to save the road haulage industry, we would find it difficult to turn the clock back because of the good relationship we have built with our Continental drivers and customers, and we will continue to develop our European operations," says Coulthard. "About a year ago someone said to me that the indigenous UK road haulage industry would be virtually extinct within five years and I scoffed at the idea. Now lam not so sure."