Irish hauliers left to count the cost
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by Lee Kimber • Northern Irish hauliers were this week counting the cost of a week's rioting in the province after the last roadblocks were removed over the weekend.
They say the financial cost of constant stoppages and threats to businesses importing English produce is simply too high to calculate.
A truck belonging to Bangorbased Curran was held up for 17 hours at a roadblock last week and the firm's yard was brought to a halt when access was blocked by felled trees. "There's a lot of people going back to work," says managing director Dickie Curran. "And the work won't be there for them because the customer's been burned out."
Some hauliers cleared trucks
out 1)1 their yards for fear of arson attacks: one says a customer cancelled a backload from England after police advised him to heed Loialist threats to bum down his 'Iwarehouse. In some case slurrY was sprayed along roadsides to stop trucks driving around roadblocks.
"We were trying to shift loads south via Dublin," a haulier says, "but it was costing us a lot more."
No hauliers were immune from the cost of the roadblocks that appeared around Bef'fast, but most of the trucks burned in the troubles were local delivery vans.
Hauliers whose trucks we T burned are loath to come forward for fear of attract trig future attacks.