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Hauliers go it alone
Page 8
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• Following Commercial Motor's report on unscrupulous freight forwarders (CM 16-22 February), hauliers are setting up their own agencies to cut out the middlemen.
Owner-drivers are vulnerable to exploitation, and to help them Andrew Crane has set up Syndicate Roadline International in Newbury.
"There's no doubt that people are being fleeced," says Crane. "Our aim is to act as an honest broker helping hauliers get in touch with each other." SRI already has 35 members across the UK and is seeking more. The bigger we are the more effective we will be because we will be able to contract reputable firms like LEP to act as our clearing house."
Under the SRI system, owner-drivers get full payment for every job and pay a 5% commission fee after they have been paid by the customer.
Michael Starkey set up an agency, JLM Communications, specialising in removals. Now he has opened it up to include general haulage.
He uses the British Telecom Gold database and only gives access to recommended hauliers. "I got tired of being taken for a ride by forwarders and decided to do it myself," says Starkey. "I believe that if hauliers co-operate intelligently, they can eliminate the cowboy factor."
Commercial Motor, posing as an owner-operator, has been checking out some prices on offer through freight forwarders.
A typical agency, Gonrand of Birmingham, offered us £850 for a one-way trip from Birmingham to Barcelona for an owner-driver with a 38-tonner paying his own ferry costs. Sealink charges about £520 return for a loaded 38-tonne artic on the Dover-Calais route: Britanny Ferries Trucldine charges £52.50 per metre (plus insurance) for the same rig on its Plymouth-Santander run. Commercial Motor estimates
that the total operating cost for a 38-tonner travelling 1,6001on a week is 76p/km. On these figures the haulier would lose money on the Gonrand job, unless he can pick up a load for the return trip at a higher rate.
However, Institute of Freight Forwarders member Clive Savigar, who runs Cole Shill Freight Services, argues that these middlemen are exploiting a lack of expertise and professionalism among the hauliers. "Teleroute and Minitel are the essence of the barter system and hauliers have got to learn how to use that system," says Savigar.