TUNNEL VISION
Page 3
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• It's funny how road hauliers always end up paying for other people's problems. Take the latest surcharge from the ferry companies. The Government cocks-up the positioning of Sterling within the ERM and the effective devaluation of the pound pushes up the ferry operators' costs. Who do you think gets to pick up the tab? You've guessed it: Joe Soap haulier. Or, to be precise, Joe Soap (International) haulier.
It's not just the odd pound, either. We're talking about a whacking 10% increase. The ferries could always absorb the cost of currency fluctuations ... and Saddam Hussein could always become the next chairman of the Road Haulage Association.
Unfortunately this is serious. Once again hauliers are the meat in the sandwich. Either they bear the extra cost of any surcharge themselves, or risk losing their customers by raising their prices. Not much of a choice.
More worrying is the fact that a number of ferry companies put up their prices by the same amount at the same time.
According to Dave Green, Freight Transport Association controller of international affairs: "we are strongly suspicious of the fact that different companies came up with exactly the same surcharges." There speaks a born diplomat, A less judicious person might simply have raised the question: "Are the ferrymen operating a cartel?" They deny it, Meanwhile the folks at Eurotunnel must be laughing their heads off. After being in the firing line for so long they must be delighted to see their rivals getting it in the neck.
The real problem is that no matter what the RHA or FTA or anyone else says, until the Chunnel opens, ferry operators have hauliers over a barrel when it comes to prices. And there's not a lot they can do about it bar swimming across. Who pays the ferryman?