'Foreign drivers can come in any time and run round
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on Christmas Day if they want, but we can't do that on the Continent'
Mike Pickering has begun the unenviable task of getting compensation from the Spanish government after his trucks were damaged during the Spanish hauliers' strike.
• If Loughborough-based haulier Mike Pickering can sell off his two remaining tippers this year, he will move into international work full-time. Nothing surprising about that, considering the state of the UK tipping industry, except that Pickering was a victim of the Spanish haulage dispute that recently hit hundreds of TtR truckers.
Pickering hauls general cargo to Portugal, Gibraltar and Spain and last autumn he and two of his drivers became entangled in the Spanish hauliers' strike which resulted in thousands of pounds worth of damage to British operators' trucks. Pickering reckons that the Spanish protest cost him 24,000 in lost business; one of his trucks sustained 21,500 worth of damage.
He has two Seddon Atkinson Stratos making weekly runs down to Spain from Caen in France where he turns them round. Pickering works on a traction-only basis for Chichester-based Freight Transfer, and he went along on the run to Spain in November with one of his drivers, Nigel Metson.
The trip went well until they got south of h-un, near the Spanish border. There they were stopped by strikers who would not allow them to move for 13 hours. Pickering describes the crowd of about 100 protesters as "an evil bunch. Most of them seemed to be owners of haulage firms. The Spanish drivers were being held like the rest of us".
The strikers were diverting all trucks on to an airfield which was soon packed out with at least 200 vehicles. The traffic was so bad that Pickering's other international driver, Grant Ross, who was also on his way down to Spain, was prevented by the French police from leaving Bordeaux.
Any drivers who did not comply immediately with the strikers' orders at lrun met with violence. One Spanish driver, in a Mercedes car transporter, tried to run through the blockade. "I saw them watching him and then they were throwing bricks and smashing the windows of the cab and the cars on the back," says Pickering. The driver kept going, but the strikers gave chase in a car, headed him off and brought him back to the airfield.
Pickering is thankful that neither he nor his drivers were hurt, although Grant Ross missed injury by inches. "A stone came through Grant's windscreen with such force that it dented the back of his cab," says Pickering. Drivers were reporting cases of strikers hanging bricks from ropes on motorway bridges into the path of oncoming trucks, Spanish police at the airfield, armed with "riot shields, batons — the lot", did little more than stand round, says Pickering. He was fortunate enough to have a non-perishable load but many other drivers were not so lucky. "The guy next to me was carrying live lobsters and crabs to Vittoria. He was having to continually top up the water in the truck and fish out the dead ones. They eventually let him go, but by that time he had lost at least half of his load."
No food was brought to the airfield, only water. Pickering had food supplies on board which saw him through the ordeal but other drivers were not so prepared: "Everyone was saying it wasn't their problem." Pickering heard that the British consulate had sent a van to take drivers to get some food, but supplies were very short in the area and cigarettes were nonexistent.
REPRISALS
The trucks were eventually released from the airfield, although many owner-drivers were afraid of moving their vehicles for fear of reprisals once they got back on the road. Pickering was the third vehicle out of the field and he got unloaded at Gibraltar,without further problems. He flew home but his two other drivers suffered more delays on the return journeys.
Pickering was so incensed by the violence towards British drivers during the strike that on his return he vowed to organise a drivers' protest against what he secs as discrimination: "The UK is open 365 days a year. In France, for instance, there are days when you can't use the Periplierique, and days when you can't use the toll roads. Everything is against the British driver. Foreign drivers can come in any time and run round on Christmas Day if they want, but we can't do that on the Continent."
He tried to get support from drivers for a demonstration to draw attention to the problems they suffer abroad, but so far no united protest has been mounted. The problem for most drivers is time, says Pickering. "An owner-driver is trying to get his trucks turned round. He hasn't got the time to get involved in a protest." But Pickering has not abandoned the idea of a forceful demonstration and says that he still gets letters from hauliers asking what's happening.
COMPENSATION
Getting compensation from the Spanish government for damage caused to vehicles during the strike is another issue Pickering is determined not to drop. He has just sent off his claim, after spending hours of work on getting the documents translated, sorting out relevant invoices and checking and rechecking that he is providing the right information. But most hauliers will be too daunted to bother, he believes: "1 bet 70% won't even bother because they don't think they'll get anything back." Once again, time is against the small operator who is too busy running his business to grapple with Spanish claim forms.
Pickering contacted RHA international group chairman Geoffrey Cave-Wood about pushing for compensation. Cave-Wood says that he is pressing for the EC to work out a compensation formula for the Community. He fears that militant action, particularly in Latin countries, will get worse as the Single Market draws nearer.
In the meantime Pickering is concentrating on making his business pay, particularly in the cut-throat tipping sector which is where his UK work still lies. He runs two eight-wheel tippers for ARC Eastern and is constantly battling against low rates, rate undercutting and late payers. "'Ile trouble is, the bloke in a beat-up old banger earns the same as the guy with a ,52,000 truck," he says.
Pickering has made a loss of about £30,000 in the past 18 months, which has been compounded by selling off two trucks at a loss to a leasing company. He shrugs when asked if he'll do better this year: "Paying off existing debts is the trouble. I want to expand but to expand you've got to have the bank behind you, and the bank's reluctant to help anyone at the moment," He plans to sell his two tippers, but can't get a realistic price at present. But once they're off his hands, Pickering will set his sights squarely on new business in Europe.
LI by Gill Harvey