'Farm concessions unfair to hauliers'
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Agricultural aid undercuts haulage operators, says RHA
• Accusations, with photographic evidence to support them, that farmers and contractors are misusing financial and other concessions enabling them to use farm tractors and dangerous and unsuitable trailers as a cheap means of road haulage at the expense of the road haulier, are contained in a report made by the agricultural hauliers' group of the RHA.
The report was made earlier this year and sent to the NFU with whom the RHA has close contacts, but now the accusations have been more widely circulated and the DoE, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, RoSPA, and the National Association of Agricultural Contractors are all aware of the RHA's concern.
The RHA accepts that farmers were given financial aid, when conditions were difficult, in the form of reduced excise duty for tractors and with no limit on what may be hauled within a 15-mile radius. But, says the RHA, unfair advantage has been taken by the agricultural contractors who now use farm tractors and trailers to undertake regular haulage of farm, agricultural and woodland produce.
The main complaint, however, is that tractors are being used to haul old, disused commercial trailers that would never be able to obtain plating and testing certificates — and this at a time when road hauliers are being subjected to more and more stringent regulations. Photographic evidence has been produced by the RHA of tractors regularly towing old trailers with as much goods as it was possible to carry. Many of these vehicles, complains the report, were taking loads in excess of 20 tons into sugarbeet factories while commercial vehicles, limited to 16 tons gvw, were being obliged to offload small excesses on to farm trailers already grossly overloaded.
The GV160 form, used against overloaded commercial vehicles, has not been issued against dangerous and overloaded farm trailers.
The Association concludes its report with comparisons of regulations governing construction and use of commercial vehicles and the lack of any similar braking, weight, licence, drivers' hours or pay regulations that are applied to tractors or farm trailers used by contractors.