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Counting the cost of closure
Page 9
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Barry Proctor would like to remind the Chancellorthat our industry keeps his coffers full — so if he lets it collapse he'll find a huge hole in his Budget..
It's possible that, if you looked at the industry's pronouncements over the last few years, we could be accused of crying wolf. You and I are more than aware that we are suffering from cripplingly high costs and have been for some time. We've gone cap in hand to the government several times, telling them that unless positive action is taken to help us a large part of the industry will go to the wall.
Fortunately this crash hasn't happened yet but we have been seeing a slow and steady erosion of those hauliers who just can't make ends meet. But proving to the government that fuel prices are crippling the industry is a different matter; hence the Burns Inquiry.
As part of my response to this I've been doing my sums not simply to report how slim my profit margin is; it's about telling the government what I give to them.
By my calculations, for every vehicle I run I pay the government about £700 per week (including all the drivers' tax and NI contributions, plus the tax on the fuel and so on). For a fleet of 24 vehicles this adds up to a pretty tidy £16,800 per week, or 2873,600 per year. If I go bust Mr Brown will lose that contribution. On top of that, it's hauliers like me who support a raft of local businesses. So if I go, their businesses suddenly look less rosy too. It's not just lost income either with crashed firms come redundancies, and that's another cost for the government as it looks after my drivers' dole money.
Someone else could come in to do the work, no doubt, but chances are they won't be a UK company. Yet more lost tax receipts for the chancellor Perhaps it's time we figured out what we bring to the UK economy and the government's funds each year and tell them what they stand to lose. "For every vehide I run I pay the government about £700 a week Fora fleet of 24 that adds up to a tidy 873,600 a year"