Pickering gains support
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• Owner Operators UK is cautiously backing haulier Mike Pickering's campaign to set up a network of haulage companies to fight for better pay rates and conditions (CM 7-13 February).
Following a meeting in Rugby on Sunday, the bulk-buying association says it will give as many hauliers as possible free associate membership of Owner Operators as a means of linking them to the campaign. But Pickering is keen to stress that his venture — which he calls United National and International Transport (UNIT) 1991 — is independent of Owner Operators.
UNIT has its own logo, which Pickering wants hauliers to display on their vehicles, and representatives in Preston, Brighton, Newmarket, Dover and Scotland.
Pickering has appeared on local TV since launching his campaign and being stuck in the Spanish hauliers' strike, and he hopes this high profile will attract like-minded ownerdrivers.
He says he has received 1,000 pledges of support from hauliers and plans that UNIT will be able to negotiate directly with customers.
Owner Operators insists that it is "spearheading" the campaign to unite ownerdrivers and "provide a regional structure through which the industry can be promoted, discussed and information circulated". The first stage will be to arrange a series of meetings throughout the country for members to "raise their concerns and begin to develop clear policies and aims", it says.
Owner Operators' Mike Billingham says he is against the idea of another organisation to simply "go in and say 'we want an increase in rates'." He says that hauliers are being offered associate membership of the association to help build their campaign: "We're trying to get away from the idea that Owner Operators is trying to get more members and more money."