Dery prices leap again
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A SEVEN PENCE increase in dery prices — contributing to a 17p rise for hauliers this year alone — could force many hauliers out of business, the Road Haulage Association claimed on Tuesday.
This latest blow to the industry's costs is the third oil price rise this year. Shell has in creased the price of its bulk commercial dery by 6.8p per gallon, while BP, Mobil and Esso have increased their prices by 7.25p a gallon. Since September, hauliers' costs have increased by 14 per cent, most of them attributable to dery price rises over that time, said an angry RHA spokesman.
Retail diesel prices now range between 188.2p and 194.1p.
One oil company admitted that there was a tendency for diesel to be hit by price rises more than petrol because the diesel market is much less competitive.
However, the oil companies blamed the low price of Ster ling against the US dollar, plus the very high prices on the Rotterdam spotmarket for the latest dery — and petrol — increases.
But the RHA retorted that "something must be done to relieve the Situation". An RHA spokesman told CM that hauliers were having enough difficulties in increasing rates, and now they were faced by another large dery increase.
She continued that the RHA would repeat the message it sent last month to the Chancellor, that fuel tax, standing presently at over 65p per gallon, should be cut to ease the problems hauliers were increasingly facing.
One haulier, Rochdale Freighter Service's Terry Duggan reacted fiercely to the latest situation, "Increases by the Chancellor and the oil companies are taking the bread out of working men's mouths," he said.
As a member of the RHA, he said that its director-general, Freddie Plaskett, should organise heavy lobbying of MPs by 200 to 300 operators to get results.