On Fri, 30 May 2008 16:21:13 +0100, August West
wrote:

Dan Sheppard writes:

Derek Geldard wrote:

According to a trucker on the rajo.
They take an axle out and use the space for an extra large fuel tank.

Around our way there are some trucks parked up with massive tanks
between the cab and the, um, load. It's a bit like the days of the
steam engine all over again. The tanks are the full height and width
of the cab, but only extend back about two feet. That still makes them
about 450gallons, though, by my reckoning, or about 4000 miles or so,
I think. Should keep you going.

This being the case, where's the problem? Are UK hauliers somehow unable
to fit the same large tanks, and go to where the fuel is cheap, fill up,
and then compete with the nasty forigners?

What do we buy from the Baltic states? Top of the list when I was
there seemed to be wooden pallets. They don't get enough daylight to
even grow wheat - Cabbages and Beetroot it is then.

It seems the big trucking companies (Stobart Et Al) who have other big
UK Blue Chip companies as customers don't even attempt to compete at
that level.

However, the driver (apparently a significant proportion of the cost
of running a truck) still needs to draw wages on a UK scale not a
Latvian or Lithuanian scale in order to meet UK living costs and
satisfy minimum wage regulations, not to mention pay UK tax and a
great deal of UK haulage is done by (family) owner driver companies
with 1 - 4 trucks. It is these people who are threatened with imminent
bankruptcy staring them in the face.

IGWS it's not a good time to be a-selling second hand trucks.

DG