How many bankers is the industry worth?
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1 THOUGHT THE comments from Des Evans regarding fuel costs and profit margins in transport were interesting and refreshing (CM 18 November). I agree 100% with his figures, and I'm sure most operators would.
To put this in to perspective, I believe you would need to operate 333 trucks with approximately 500 employees producing a turnover of £50m to earn the same pre-tax profit margin as a financially astute city bankers' annual bonus of Lim.
To put it another way, three bankers are worth roughly the same as the entire Stobart logistics business. [Ed's note: Not quite; in the six months ending 31 August 2010 Eddie Stobart, the road transport arrn of Stobart Group contributed a profit of f11.9m to overall group profit of 115.4m.] Evans also makes a very valid point regarding the congestion that is now the cancer of the road haulage industry in this country, with unprecedented levels of congestion on our roads that has not seen a new public motorway opened for years now.
Traffic is also subject to manufactured congestion: for example, those of us that live in the South-East are subjected to the chaos created by the tolls at the Dartford tunnel. Kevin Buck Leigh on Sea Essex