UC plans move to owner-drivers
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by Juliet Morrison • Parcels company United Carriers is considering recruiting owner-drivers. It is asking its employed drivers if they would be interested in buying their own trucks or vans for making collections and deliver ies to its 21 depots. If the drivers reject the proposal United Carriers might take on outside owner-drivers, but it stresses no in-house staff would be made redundant as a result. The trunking fleet will remain inhouse. So far interest from the drivers has been patchy. Most are afraid that the contracts are only for 12 months and that the company could end the deal with only a month's notice.
It is believed that drivers are being given the choice of buying vehicles from United Carriers or supplying their own. In either case the vehicles would have to be liveried in United Carriers' colours and used solely on company work during the week. At weekends, the ownerdrivers would generally be free to use their vehicles on other work.
The United Road Transport Union is against the idea, which it believes is designed purely to cut the company's costs. Last month United Carriers' parent reported a reduction in pre-tax profits on continuing operations
to 41.2m in the half-year to 2 July, compared with £1.9m last year (CM 8-14 September).
URTU plans to meet with the company's shop stewards to discourage staff from taking on the responsibility of extra costs such as truck insurance and maintenance.
United Carriers says: "The business is growing and taking on new drivers as owner-drivers is a flexible way of increasing our resources."