Felixstowe delays lead to blockade threat
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• Felixstowe hauliers have become so fed up with continuing delays with the loading and unloading of containers that they are threatening to blockade the port unless a meeting this week improves the situation.
One transport boss who uses the port says the "majority of Felixstowe hauliers" would take part in the action. He warns that a blockade would "bring the docks to a grinding halt".
Other hauliers say that it often takes six hours to turn round a tractive units. They blame Felixstowe management for increasing the port's shipping capacity without increasing its provision for hauliers (CM 8-14 May).
However, Dave Keates, direc
tor and general manager of Felixstowe docks, says a blockade would be an over-reaction which would not help either party. He is willing to meet the hauliers but believes the solution lies in their hands: "The hauliers concentrate their work between 2pm to 6pm," he says. "If they spread the work throughout a 24-hour period things will be easier. We need to talk though to find a constructive way out of this."
H About 350 hauliers will stage a walk-out from Dublin Port on 1 July if they do not obtain a rates increase from shipping firms. the Irish Road Haulage Association has warned.
1RHA director-general Chris McCormack says: "If we do not achieve a rates increase there will be a withdrawal en masse." Rates at the port have not changed since 1981 and feelings are running high. he warns. Operators voted for higher rates at an IRTIA meeting in Dublin earlier this month.