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RDCs — WE HAVE TO FIND A SOLUTION
Page 3
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Inefficiency is not in anyone's interest. While Tesco prepares to meet drivers' representatives over its new RDC policy, the unions, other supermarkets and many hauliers are waiting to see if the retail giant will listen to the drivers' complaints with an open mind, or simply go through the motions of consultation. It's important. Not only because drivers at Tesco RDCs feel 'evicted from their homes' by the health and safety policy which requires them to leave their cabs, but also because the whole issue of best practice at RDCs has been sadly neglected.
This is the logistics industry, supposedly a model of efficiency Yet in the past decade no one has been able to work out the logistics of having many trucks drop off goods at a single point. We've had issues of delays, fines and demurrage. We've had drivers trapped in endless queues without toilets and refreshment. We've had drivers caught in traffic onyto be told they've missed their slot. We've even have drivers fined for being early The drivers delivering to Tesco must be catered for. If they must leave their cabs they need places to eat, to relax, to relieve themselves. They also need someone to work out how all this affects their period-of-availability status.
But it isn't just the drivers delivering to Tesco who deserve some consideration: it's all drivers delivering to RDCs, and the hauliers who absorb the costs of delays.
This is an industry which must run efficiently in order to survive. The supermarkets are in a dominant position. But if they allow the fact that they can force suppliers to their will to blind them to the consequences of abusing their relationships be it with hauliers, farmers or anyone else in the supply chain then the country and its consumers will be the poorer for it.
"We've had drivers trapped in endless queues without toilets or refreshments"
Road transport is an essential industry, not least to the supermarkets and their customers. So we hope Tesco is taking these talks seriously. And we hope that someone enterprising will bring together experts from the logistics industry, the unions, the supermarkets and RDC management to come up with a Best Practice solution that actually works.