COMMENT' HANDS OFF HAULIERS!
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ut-throat rates, lousy conditions, rising costs.. .sounds familiar? The only way to survive in a trade as tough as haulage is to offer a top-notch service at cut-price cost and be infinitely flexible towards customer requirements—and even this is no guarantee of security. From independents like those at British Steel (see left) to the largest operators like Exel Logistics (page A), job losses are a daily threat. So why, exactly, has EU Transport Commissioner Neil Kinnock had a go at hauliers for being inflexible and accused them of "modal tribalism"? Quite apart from the fact that hauliers are, of necessity, among the most flexible businessmen in the country, it's hard to take a railfreight alternative seriously when, as Kinnock himself admits, reliability is often horribly poor. In any case, it's the customers who decide how to send their goods: hauliers merely carry out their wishes. Kinnock even went so far as to criticise the 60bn kilometres a year travelled on Europe's roads by empty trucks, citing an estimated cost of £30bn. Maybe so. But hauliers who could get the backloads certainly would, and freight trains returning empty would hardly be more productive. While an integrated, intermodal transport system is certainly a seductive idea, it is insulting for hauliers to be accused of harbouring the wrong mindset in an era when they have been so badly squeezed by customers and Government that firms continue to go bust every week and hauliers feel they must take to the streets in protest. So lay off the road haulage industry, Mr Kinnock, or someone might just start wondering how many pointless kilometres a year are travelled by the EU circus—and at what expense to Europe's tax payers.