Drivers deserve a fair rate for the job Ihave been
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involved in the transport industry since I left school in 1986, and am getting to the point where I have just about had enough. I believe transport is its own worst enemy.
I am employed by a medi um-sized international haulier where I am largely left alone to get on with the job in hand, with a decent wage, a new lorry, and a matching new trailer. It is an easy job that many would envy.
But drivers generally are not getting a rate of pay that is equal to the skill involved in negotiating today's traffic, the delivery times put upon them or the hours worked.
Hauliers, on the other hand, are cutting their own throats by not charging enough to industry to recoup their basic standing costs.
The two are linked, and until the industry wakes up and realises that you cannot run 38-tonners for 95p per mile, drivers will never get a decent rate of pay and hauliers will never show a healthy bank balance.
It doesn't help that Eddie Stobart said on Channel 5 TV that the majority of drivers are second-class citizens and tramps.
Until that sort of remark is knocked on the head and the industry starts recruiting management from within its own ranks who have served their apprenticeships on the road and not at college, it will remain an industry going nowhere fast.
It's time we took a lead and showed industry and the general public just how much depends on us.
Maybe we should use the French method?
MJ Gardiner, Diss, Norfolk.