Owner-drivers say title is joke
Page 20
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WITH REFERENCE to your article on the Langdon Industries owner-driver scheme in CM May 1, we, as owner-drivers within the scheme, feel that a very distorted account has been given. The article shows ownerdrivers as successful, secure and contented men. In most cases this is not so and the title of owner-driver has become a joke.
Most of us owner-drivers, some who have been operating since as long ago as '1975 when the scheme first began right up to those most recently joined, are in dire financial straits. We quite understand that Langdon Industries has to make a profit, but does it have to be at the expense and from the peace of mind of its drivers? Most of us not only have large overdrafts at our own banks but each of us also owe Langdon Industries thousands of pounds.
Whilst owing Langdon Industries such large debts, we feel that our backs are to the wall and the only way out is to work harder and harder. This, however, is not the formula to success as Langdon Industries have full control over our vehicle earnings. These are not enough to provide a decent living wage, more a mere existence, let alone the running cost and maintenance of our lorries.
By being self-employed and each having our own operator's licence, we relieve Langdon Industries of all worries about over-loading, driving hours offences and maintenance records. We also pay our own insurance stamp and have to be available for work 52 weeks a year and if absent we must pay for a relief driver. We have also relieved Langdon Industries of all union problems, but under the agreement we still have to belong to the TGWU.
As a haulage company, Langdon Industries deduct the usual 10 per cent fee for haulage we do for them whether it is their own work or jobs they have taken to give us for back loads, at poor rates. A job which should be done for £200 but which is carried out for £150 means a reduction of only £5 for Langdon Industries but is uneconomical for us who lose £45 and often have to run many miles empty to collect the load and we therefore lose even more! Another perk for Langdon Industries is 10 per cent on the cost of any bill on our lorries that they pay for us. Langdon Industries also omitted to say that we pay trailer rent 52 weeks a year whether we are working or off the road due to breakdowns, accidents, sickness, etc.
On lots of occasions there is not enough work for all of us and unprofitable loads are acquired so that Langdon Industries, in accordance with their contract, are keeping us working, and yet they are still taking on new owner-drivers. Why, you may ask?
The answer is quite simple! Every time Langdon Industries sell a driver a lorry they make a substantial profit, so what does it matter to them if a couple of drivers go under when they can get replacements very easily owing to the unemployment situation and the obvious attraction to most drivers of the prospect of becoming an ownerdriver.
Such glowing details as they chose to give you for your article must make it extremely tempting for any driver to join the scheme, but in reality it is not as Langdon Industries would have you believe. The only incentive most of us present drivers in the scheme have while working all the hours God sends us, just to exist, is the reduction of our debts to Langdon Industries. Industries make look so promising, so full of promise and security. Nor does it tell of those of us who have had to refinance our vehicles to repay large sums to Langdon Industries to make their profits look favourable to the parent company, TKM. Neither is there any mention of those drivers no longer in the scheme who have had what was supposed to be their lorries taken from them by Langdon Industries to repay debts to themselves.
Very often there comes a point when Langdon Industries decide that a driver is not "making a go of it", ie their debt to Langdon Industries plus their outstanding hp exceeds the value of their lorry. Langdon Industries then exercise their option to take possession of the lorry and the driver will leave still owing the company money.
Unlike the unfortunate ownerdriver, however, the company is then free to re-sell the lorry to another optimistic hopeful at as high a price as they think they can realise, usually far above recent depressed market prices. So another prospective ownerdriver sets out on the hopeful road under the five-year contract never realising that this could soon have a premature unhappy ending.
The contract tells us that we will not be allowed to become more.than £500 in debt to the company and we are assured on signing the contract that this is unlikely to occur anyway owing to the security of working within the scheme. However, they let us acquire large debts which keeps us on low incomes and completely in the hands of Langdon Industries. No consideration whatsoever is given to what hours we have worked when giving out loads, but how can we refuse work even when our time is up, when we know that we owe them thousands of pounds.
Whereas an employed driver gets double time for Sunday work plus night out money which compensates for the disruption to home life all us owner-drivers have is the fee bli hope that perhaps at the end of the month we will have reduce( our debts to Langdon Industrie; even if only by a little. When ou monthly statement from Langdon Industries arrives that hope is usually dashed and recently our debts have constantly increased.
What can we hope to benefitl Certainly not a higher standard of living, simply the possibility of one day owning our lorry outright, free of debt and with something in the bank. Unfortunately, this has become an impossible dream.
Perhaps the most accurate statement in your article was th heading of "The rare arrangement that works for Langdon Industries". Yes, it does work for Langdon Industries and for the parent company of TKM whose whole motivation is for maximum profit from minimum capital, bi not for us, just at our expense!
We hope our letter might rectify any feeling among your readers that we, working for Langdon Industries, are in Utopia. We can prove this not the case.
In fact, we are running insolvent.
LANGDON INDUSTRIES OWNER-DRIVERS (names withheld by request).