DOG EATS DOG
Page 5
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• What is wrong with tipper operators? The tipper market, we are told, is booming, because the construction industry which tipper operators serve is booming and there is more work out there than tippermen can handle. So why is it that tipper operators seem to still be in a rates war?
Tipping has always been the most cut-throat of the haulage sectors. Journeys are usually short; loads are usually low in value; customers are usually big, and so can afford to play one small operator off against another — rate-cutting has become almost a way of life.
The frightening thing is that it has remained a way of life even when high demand, a shortage of vehicles in service and a shortage of vehicles to buy would dictate, in any other market, quite the reverse.
Certainly the customer will still look for the lowest rate, even in a boom period — but there must come a time when tipper operators will feel confident enough to hold out for a rational rate, knowing that the customer must pay that rate to get the job done. At the moment it seems that some tipper operators do not have that confidence, and are tripping over each other to cut rates.
That attitude will not only harm the individual operators — it will eventually harm the whole industry. Indeed, as is shown by latest survey figures (see Headline News page 4), that damage is already done — apart from the Greeks, British hauliers are the lowest paid in Europe. Nobody would claim that breaking the habits of decades by persuading customers and operators to set realistic rates is any easy task — but if the operators do not grasp the rates nettle now, while they are in a position of relative strength, they will never be able to break out of the vicious downward spiral of ever lower rates no matter what the demand.
Rogues aside, there's nothing wrong with tipper operators. It's just that the dog-eat-dog attitudes of economic depression have survived beyond their time.