Tipper bosses lobby Tarmac over rates
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by Juliet Parish • A group of 25 tipper bosses working on the new M74 in southern Scotland have united to demand a 25% hike in rates from quarrying and road surfacing giant Tarmac Roadstone. Representatives of the hauliers, who say Tarmac has broken its promise of a 5% rates increase made six months ago, plan to meet company chiefs in Dumfries today (Thursday) to put their case for a better deal.
They say they have been steamrollered into accepting so-called special rates which are non-negotiable and do not include the 5% increase announced last spring. One owner-driver in the group says he is about £250 a week worse off since being put solely on special rates, although he says the standard rates have not improved for the past eight years.
Hauliers are 36p per tonne worse off now on one special rates job than they were in 1986, he says.
Tarmac Roadstone has agreed to meet the tippermen after receiving a letter from them last month. The group, which operates 150 trucks, will ask for the special rates system to be abolished and to be put back on revised standard rates—around 15% higher than those currently agreed. But if the special rates stay, they want a 25% improvement in pay and to know how prices are established.
In the letter they told Tarmac Roadstone that "continually rising" costs made the rates unbearable. One of the letter's signatories has since given up on the short-haul work. John Hyslop, a director of Dtunfries-based ACC, is so disillusioned with rates he is auctioning a fleet of 50 trucks and trailers (CM11-17 November).
However the group has made no threats yet as to what action to take if its call for a rates increase is ignored.
Two years ago, a similar group of tippermen united to fight for better rates from Tarmac Roadstone—they won an increase.