Beef row over trailer
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by Phil Revell • Shropshire haulier Cadwallader, now concentrating on trailer rental, has reacted angrily to a report in a farming magazine which showed one of its trailers delivering German beef to an Eastbourne meat plant.
In the Welsh borders, where Cadwallader is based, beef farmers have been hard hit by the BSE crisis and the suggestion a local company was helping to import foreign beef did not go down well at the week's livestock auctions.
But Russell Cadwallader says a picture used in Farmers Weekly gave completely the wrong impression and the trailer pictured had been rented out to a local company. He adds: "Once the rent agreement is signed we have no say in what it is used for."
Cadwallader itself has been hit hard by the BSE crisis.
When it voluntarily closed the bulk of its business last June 138 workers were made redundant. The company still trades through its trailer rental business, but is much reduced from its previous 106-truck/200-trailer operation.
David Cadwallader says: "We keep six Volvos to service the trailer business but we have no plans to expand the trucking side at all. This deal was just a one-off rental."