Road haulage stays top of the transport league
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• Road haulage continues to extend its dominance over other methods of freight transport, according to figures released last week by the Department of Transport.
Hauliers and van drivers shifted 65% of the country's 221bn tonne/kilometres of freight in 1994 compared with 55% of 187 tonnes in 1985.
Hauliers' share of the total load has increased each year since then, apart from a 1% fall in the recession years of 1991 and 1992.
The report hints that the industry may have made even bigger gains since then, saying
that hauliers carried 149.6bn tonne/kilometres in 1995. What proportion of Britain's total freight movements that represents will remain a mystery until the DOT publishes figures for rail cargoes. But Commercial Motor estimates haulage's share of 1995's freight industry could have risen to 66%.
The biggest percentage of the industry's 400,000 drivers work on machinery-carrying contracts, followed by food, building materials, agricultural products and chemicals.
However, building materials' ranking may be exaggerated by their weight.