DOES THE CRISIS REALLY EXIST?
Page 26
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
• I read with interest the article on Britain's Driver Crisis (9-15June issue) and would like to know if this is peculiar to the south of England, since you seem to have only interviewed companies in that region.
I am a self-employed Class I driver and you state in your article that 52% of the companies would not take on temporary/agency drivers because the drivers meet the customers. In effect, any company who takes me on is my customer and if I am acceptable to them why should I not be acceptable to their customers?
Earlier this year I sent out over 40 letters to companies within a 30 mile radius of my home offering a holiday/sick relief service to them. These letters produced such a total lack of response that I wonder if the Post Offer actually delivered them!
I cannot parallel my experience with your article. If your article and the Driver Agency advertisements in the local papers are to be believed companies have so much work and no drivers, that they have jobs "coming out of their ears," why are transport managers not making my telephone "redhot" with their enquiries, since in my letter I stated that I offer a 24-hour go anywhere/ anytime service?
Stephen P Shaw, Oddjob Relief Services, Boston Spa, Yorkshire. be of interest to your readers.
I have made a short list:lveco-Ford 300.30 8x4; a 6x2 version of Leyland-DAF's 95; a 6 x 2 Renault R340 Cat-engined Foden 4000 8x4; the Ford Transit 120L SWB high-roof; another version of the MAN F90; Volvo's re-specced ELIO; and Bedford's turbo-diesel Midi. Robert Watson, Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire.
0 We expect to be roadtesting all of these in the foreseeable future, particularly lveco Ford's 300.30 "Maggie" eightlegger and MAN's F90 twinsteer. Manufacturers please note! Ed