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SERV CE BREAK
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August can be a tricky time for UK hauliers delivering to Continental Europe. David Harris examines the pros and cons of extended industry shutdowns.
Lazy or enlightened? That's the debate the Anglo-Saxon world usually has when faced with Continental Europe's habit of closing down its businesses in August. When the BBC ran an online debate about the controversial practice a few years ago, reactions ranged from the indignant to the envious. Unsurprisingly. UK hauliers tend to be less interested in the philosophy of the European shutdown than in the practicalities of what it means for their own workload.
While some operators describe the long summer shutdown in parts of Europe as a -pain in the backside", it does seem to depend what business you are in. Paul Hignett, transport manager at general haulier John Bywater Transport in Dover, estimates that during the summer the company's business can drop by as much as 40% at any one time. This is partly because a proportion of the firm's work involves carrying quite heavy parts for manufacturers, whose factories tend to be e ones that shut for two to four weeks at a time in the summer. Bywater's work includes transporting tractor cabs made in Europe back to UK companies that assemble them.
"What we try to do is to put into drivers' contracts that they should try and take their holiday when the factory is closed, but of course not all drivers want to do that especially because it is more expensive for them to go on holiday in July or August," says Hignett.
Unpredictable workload
Sometimes extra work can be picked up in August, but this is unpredictable. "A couple of years ago we got a sudden burst of work in August and we thought that maybe this would happen in the future, but last year it went quiet again, so it's hard to tell,"says Hignet t.
Paul Marklove, transport manager at Eric Vick Transport. also finds that European work plummets in the summer. Not only are some regular contracts suspended for a few weeks, but return loads on the work that continues are harder to get, with rates being forced down as there is less work to go round.
"It means you have to diversify,says Marklove.-We redeploy as many vehicles as we canon UK work, sonic drivers go on holiday, and we try to offer other customers good rates for work that can be done at any time of year —but it does make things tougher."
But while general hauliers can find things harder as the Europeans take their annual break, some specialist hauliers see no real change over the summer. Les Adams, a Camberley, Surrey-based owner-operator who specialises in transporting mainframe computers. says the summer holidays have no effect at all deliver to places such as 110. banks and offices rather than factories, so they don't tend to close in the same way. And I sometimes think that it suits them to have computers delivered when a lot of people are on holiday."
Exceptions to the rule
Hauliers specialising in carrying food and foodrelated products such as packaging also say the August holidays do not adversely affect them. Ray Grocott, the chairman of Grocontinental, which carries a high proportion of food.says: "Because we are in the food industry we are relatively untouched. People don't stop eating because it is August."
Grocott is also relatively relaxed about Euro-shutdowns because the firm does not run scheduled services but sends vehicles only when they are needed."Ail our deliveries are as and when they want them, so if their bank holidays are a bit different from ours you just work around it. It's no big deal. If there is a little bit less work one week there is usually a bit extra the next.
And being in the food industry can mean even more work in August rather than less. "We do a lot of work delivering the cheese that is used by the pizza industry and this usually increases in summer,says Grocott.
Even the smaller headaches faced by Grocontinental when delivering to mainland Europe have eased in recent years. -In Gennany,for example, you used not to be able to deliver or pick up on a Friday afternoon, because that is when their weekend started, but that isn't the case any more.The work ethic across Europe is steadily becoming more similar."
Peter Cullum, international manager at the Road Haulage Association, agrees that even where differences persist,companies are usually willing to accommodate other working patterns.
"In Scandinavia, for instance, the closures tend lobe in July." he says."A few years ago hauliers did find it hard to make deliveries in July, but now a lot of the Scandinavian firms keep a skeleton staff on precisely for things like that."
Embrace the differences Cullum adds that although different cultural patterns in taking holidays may persist, most hauliers who are affected have learned to live with it. -Whether it will disappear in the longterm remains to he seen, but it is interesting comparing the way different countries do things. In the States most people seem to have only two weeks' holiday and in China I'm not sure they have any holidays, so you can understand why the rest of the world thinks Europe is a little odd.
Odd perhaps. but it does seem unlikely that the disapproval from those with a nonstop work ethic will influence the famously independent French,the conservative Italians or even the Germans, whose culture seems to value the routine of leisure as much as the discipline of work.'The pragmatic approach of UK hauliers is probably exactly right: it's not exactly 'if you can't beat them, join them', but at least accept that moaning about the holiday habits of other countries is likely to be fruitless. •