AWARENESS CAMPAIGN
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We only get Chi/occasionally and have missed many previous reports about the fuel prices.
We are based in the Scottish Borders and would like to support you and become involved. We only have one truck but like everyone else are struggling with our diesel bills. And we have a new truck with a fuel problem so we are paying even more than we ought to.
My husband and I feel the only way forward is to make the public more aware. Advertise on billboards, TV, magazines (particularly women's). Make people more aware that without trucks to make deliveries, the country would come to a halt very quickly. There would be no food in the shops and no petrol at the pumps, for example.
Make an advertisement showing an empty supermarket with a statement such as, "So you wanted trucks off the road".
Lobbying Parliament is no use, it just falls on deaf ears. Driving to speed limits will only annoy motorists rather than get them on our side. We realise we cannot strike like the French— we can't afford to take days off and we would never get enough support.
Making the public aware is the only way to go. Most people think drivers either go home every night or sleep in hotels— they don't know what they have to put up with.
The public are clueless when it comes to trucks. They have no idea how much we pay for road tax, how much diesel a truck uses in a week, what you get per mile or how much it costs to keep a truck on the road, week in, week out.
Good luck with the campaign, but you will have to make hauliers more aware of your group and get support from right across Britain if it is to succeed.
Denise & Michael Chappell, MC Haulage, Berwickshire.