ItIcKINNON
Page 36
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HOW MANY PEOPII pouring milk on their cornflakes pause to reflect on the work involved in getting this placid liquid to the breakfast table? If they think about it at all, they might conjure up a pleasant picture of a milkmaid in a summer meadow, some half-remembered childhood fantasy.
They won't imagine an industry working around the clock, 365 days a year, in at weathers. But that's what really happens, of course, and Bob McKinnon can tell you at about it The story begins with his father, lames McKinnon jnr, who left school at 13 and eight years later, in 1931, bought a Vulcan and a milk round from a local haulier.
Today McKinnon has 18 trucks on milk collection, visiting 400 farms a day from Ayrshire to the western islands. The collections are made for Scottish Milk and most deliveries go to Wiseman's Dairies at Bellshill, near Glasgow. The work is not only 365 days a year but nigh on 24-hours a day. Which is why McKinnon, who is also RHA national chairman, lives on site. "I was brought up to believe that if you're the gaffer you should be on the premises," he says.
For the enlightenment of cornflake eaters everywhere he explains the pattern of work. The last farm collections arrive back at McKinnon's Kilmarnock site at 02:00hrs. Drivers coming on at 04:00hrs deriver these to BeUshill then do two further collections from about 15 farms each and deliver back to Bellshill. At 18:00hrs two drivers come on and load thine vehicles each, leaving the last load at Kilmarnock at 02:00hrs—and the whole process starts again.
The depot is nominally closed for two hours between 02:00-04:00hrs, but if necessary the workshops can open through the night Naturally, no one wants to live next door to a 24-hour trucking operation, however laudable its purpose, so McKinnon moved to his present secluded site—a former farmyard—in 1981 to escape the stream of complaints.
If the job is tough on drivers it's also tough on the lorries: rutted farm tracks and island roads play havoc with suspensions, brakes, axles and tyres. Mckinnon is triating Dunlop SupersmOes to cope with these rough conditions but ruefully admits: "My record on CV9s is not as good as it should be for an RHA chairman."
Man does not live by milk alone and McKinnon's other main job is supplying farms with animal feed during the winter, using a fleet of 10 bulkers. Again the islands are serviced, including a tiny outlet called Little Cumbrae, off larg, which has just one farm and casts £35 return on the ferry. Like newspaper distribution, this is a job where you must provide the same service to all your customers. In dry summers the tankers can also be called into service providing extra water for fanns.
Conversation turns to McKinnon's job with the RHA. He says he has a natural rapport with new director-general Steven Norris: "We both see the RNA as a sleeping giant" Changes are being introduced to get rid of the "fuddy duddy" image, including the opening of a Westminster office in November to communicate better with Parliament McKinnon thinks of himself as a departure from the norm: he may be the youngest chair ever and the only tippennan to hold the post He is still a working haulier and wants the RHA to be more representative of operators with one to five trucks in the services it offers.
He stresses that he is not an advocate of merging the RHA and the FIA but believes that somewhere down the line, maybe in 10 or 20 years events might intervene: "Now the Government has merged transport and the environment it wit only have time to talk to one industry body," he remarks.
On devolution, he is disappointed by the referendum result He fears that a legislature increasing Scottish taxes could leave him and his countrymen less competitive and at the mercy of English hauliers. Besides, he says: "I am a loyalist and a conservative and believe in the union."