the gou, dame
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Congratulations to Steve Geary for his excellent report on the BAOD Annual National Conference (CM, November 17).
In the same issue, your Editorial on the BAOD brought home the truth of the matter and I endorse your warnings.
What I cannot understand is the mentality of the average owner-driver in this country today, because to reject the opportunities that have been offered to them over the last 12 months can only be described as stupid.
From November 13, 1977 at the Derby Conference, we set' out to encourage them to join together for their own good and we were able to establish nine additional local associations, but to recruit only 272 members in a year, when there are 25,000 throughout the country, must make the uninitiated wonder what on earth we were doing.
In that period full support was given by the trade press, particularly CM. It was not a case of luring the owner-driver into something that was unknown. For the majority to reject such an opportunity makes one question their intelligence. I can only suggest that they should not be in business.
Lastly I have a message for all the owner-drivers who chose not to join the BAOD: you deserve what is coming to you, you deserve to be exploited by subcontracting hauliers and clearing houses and you deserve to go out of business!
This message comes from the person who devoted an average of 50 unpaid hours per week of his spare time for 12 months and travelled the length and breadth of the country at his own expense, so that life could be better for you by assisting you to actually show a profit instead of gathering a pittance of a wage as you are now, and will continue to do so, until you finally come to your senses and cease trading, or go bankrupt.
MIKE WELLS, Ex-Secretary, British Association of Owner Drivers, Egham, Surrey.