Better rates but drivers leave
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• Some of the Midlands hauliers and owner-drivers working for English China Clay Building Products are looking for other work, despite gaining a rates increase this week.
Owner-driver Philip Faulkner planned to stop hauling out of ECC's Hulland Ward, Derbyshire factory last Friday (27 May). Faulkner has worked for the company for 25 years and ECC supplied around 75% of his business, but he says the 2% increase for all operators with articulated flatbeds is not enough; the increase boosts the rate to 60-65p per mile. Faulkner is selling his flatbed and buying a D-reg tipper to work for Longcliffe Quarries.
Ashbourne-based L&SJ Summers supplies flatbeds with cranes to ECC: it is among the hauliers to be offered a 5% increase on radials over 80km. Owner Stephen Summers says his trucks can each earn £250 per week more on other work. He has reduced his ECC work from an average of 17 loads a day to two or three.
Another operator says a load from Hulland Ward to Manchester with a flatbed and crane paid £5.30 per tonne before the increase. Summers says ECC would need an increase of 7.5-10% to be in line with its competitors.