Diesel prices take another victim—MIlingbeck closes
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• by Karen Milos Killingbeck Transport ends its 80-year history this week with the Blackburn company's boss blaming its closure on soaring diesel prices.
The company has gone into the red over the past couple of years as it has been caught between rising costs and steel customers fighting for rates tuts rather than rises.
The auction of Killingbeck's 27 tractive units and 39 trailers, along with garage equipment and spares, takes place this weekend at its site on the Whitebirk Industrial Estate, Blackburn, Lancs, leaving the company's 20 staff facing redundancy. Managing director John Killingbeck plans to retire.
Around six years ago fuel made up 25% of the company's running costs—today that figure is up to 40%, says Killingbeck. Steel customers, including British Steel, have only increased their rates by very small amounts.
Speaking just days before the Chancellor Gordon Brown is expected to increase fuel duty by a further 6% above inflation, a grim-sounding Killingbeck said: "I've gradually become disillusioned. The harder we work the worse it has become because we use more fuel. The civil servants and the Government do not understand that you can't keep putting the price of fuel up.
"Diesel is the life blood of industry," he concluded. "Unless they face up to that there will be a catastrophe."