EIOW DO I GET INTO HAULAGE?
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Ve gets lots of letters from woulde hauliers seeking advice. We hought we'd share this one with lur readers because, come to hink of it, they're really best placed to provide the answers
)ear Sir,
understand from my cousin Ted that rot, are the man to write to for advice. "ed is a haulier but he says he can't jive me any guidance without prejudice Ind heaven knows there's enough of hat about already.
We've always been grocers, or general tore keepers really, but since the two .iupermarkets opened in the town :hings have got really difficult for us 3nd I'm looking for a trade where the ;mall man can really get on if he's prepared to work hard and give value for money. I'm not afraid of work, you understand, and I'm quite prepared to start with one or two lorries and work up to a bigger fleet.
You will see that I am not an amateur in business, and I have made a few enquiries around before approaching you. There is an Irish chap who comes in our local and he's got a 6yd tipper which he says will easily carry 12 tons. He's been working for a big haulier locally, whose lorries are too heavy to go out to some of the sites. This big operator is very helpful indeed and he pays Paddy at the end of every month and even lets him have fuel and tyres and things like that and deducts the cost from his monthly cheque.
He's very pleased with his new tipper: he's buying it on a scheme over three or four years and then he pays them a pound and it's his. He's had it almost seven months and apart from a few tyres and one or two springs he's had virtually no trouble with it at all. However, he seems to work rather late and he certainly gets very dirty, and I reckon there must be easier jobs in the haulage world.
(My cousin Ted says that he knows his type bloody well, as he puts it. He says it's blokes like him who drag the trade down: when he ran tippers he belonged to a thing called a Tipper Group and they used to agree on sensible rates, but then some of them would go and hire people like Paddy and make a nonsense of their unanimous agreements).
I then made the acquaintance of another gent who uses the Lounge as distinct from Paddy who I meet in the Public Bar, This man used to have a dozen or so enormous refrigerated lorries on contract to a big freezing company and evidently did very well, as he always had a big car and was often seen in the Lounge. tasked his advice and he said he'd been too long out of the trade, but he had no doubt that there were still plenty of hauliers still contracting on the same lines. He gave me the name of one in Lancashire who'd been in the trade for 20 years or so, but when I tried to contact them I was surprised to find they'd gone bust, for all their experience.
Something to do with buying very expensive special lorries and then finding that the rates weren't negotiable, whatever that means. Perhaps you would explain?
(Ted says there's a lot of it about; he says that haulage means operating lorries, and that can only be done by the man who owns them. He says there's a lot of companies wanting to play at haulage without actually risking their cash on vehicles, but also that they rarely go bust. Ted says that a contract should be binding two ways, but as he and I were both in the RAF I think perhaps it's his little joke.) I thought perhaps I'd leave the specialized transport to those who are even more experienced than the chap who went bust, and asked another man I know vaguely (I seem to know a lot of hauliers, come to think of it) what was the easiest line. He said he thought container haulage must be very simple, though he himself was a tanker operator and that was extremely technical and not for the uninitiatedl I must say I was very pleased at the response I got from the container company: they told me they would find me plenty of work and all I had to do was buy a lorry and trailer. As luck would have it they knew a man who was just giving up the trade on account of ill-health and felt sure they could persuade him to sell me his outfit at a reasonable figure.
I went to see the man, but he was engaged with a man from the D of E, whatever that is: I always thought they had to do with pollution. Anyway I had a word with his neighbour, who said he hoped I would buy the lorry and take it away. He showed me some deep ruts in the road and said he thought it was probably on account of the great weight of containers that the lorry was breaking down so often.
Well, even I know this is nonsense, as the law lays down how much weight you can put on a lorry and a firm the size of the container company wouldn't break the law deliberately, would they? Cl mentioned this to Ted, but he just gave me a funny look and laughed hysterically.) This made me think — I'm not silly you know. I read the papers, and I realized that these Continental laws permitting you to carry any load you like might be the answer; I checked it in another paper, and decided to investigate.
I hadn't realized until I spoke to a driver one day that you can also do without these ridiculous regulations we have here about how many hours you can drive. This chap told me over a few Scotches on the Eastern Avenue about the handsome bonus his employer could afford to pay him for running to Milan non-stop. I know enough about economics to realize where the saving comes from, but here again I'm not quite sure how to start in this branch and look to you for advice.
You will readily understand that by now I was thoroughly confused, and I asked old Harry in the Smoke Room what he thought about it all. Harry isn't in the haulage trade, being a governor of shop stewards at the local car factory, but seemed to know a great deal about it.
He said that if ever he got tired of his job (£93.40 net last week) he thought he would become an organizer of lorry drivers by way of a rest.
However, according to him every haulier is his own labour relations man and in his words a "rank bloody amateur" — and not very strong on unity either. He says he never heard of a member of his union voting for a pay rise and then ringing up the boss the next morning to say he didn't actually want it. Harry says hauliers are beyond his understanding, and he understands modern industry pretty welt, A this bothered me a bit, but on checking with an old friend who used to be a haulier in the Midlands I found he'd sold his lorries because he was inclined to agree with Harry. I didn't ask him why, he seemed a bit bitter about it, and he'd always been pretty jolly when he delivered coal to us years ago.
This made me think that perhaps I might do well hauling coal in bulk. I asked our local coal people what they thought and they said they'd be glad to give me "back loads" from here. I asked what about front loads and they said they always had their deliveries done by local hauliers "on a return-load basis" (please explain.) However, they must have been mistaken in their times, as they said that they had to be able to rely on three deliveries a week and all their local people managed this by night-loading. As I told the manager, this was not possible in the permitted hours as the driver would never get to bed, but he obviously did not understand as he only laughed.
Well, now, Sir, all this may be as plain as day to you, for Ted says you see all the aspects of transport from where you sit, but you will surely agree that it is very puzzling to an ordinary chap like me.
I'd still value your advice, but meantime I'm going to buy Ted's property (he says he can do with the money) and work for him as a driver; Perhaps I'll get to be his shop
steward. Ernest N. Quirer