Trucking Britain Out of a Recession – Part 2

Of the twelve key issues raised, the most popular choice was to be expected. With 72% of respondents choosing ‘taking commercial vehicles off the fuel duty escalator’, hopefully the government will listen.

The other eleven, however, were not as expected, and were not so decisive. The full list from the TBOR (Trucking Britain Out of a Recession) follows:

• Take CVs off the fuel duty escalator 72%
• Introduce a levy on foreign operators 57%
• Maintain (and increase) investment in infrastructure 32%
• Invest more in VOSA to tackle rogue operators 29%
• Deliver the truck parking strategy (launched in November 2009) 24%
• Revise the Highway Code to educate all road users to be more aware of trucks on the road 18%
• Tackle truck crime 15%
• Launch a CV scrappage scheme to get pre-Euro-3 trucks off the road 11%
• Review pre-pack administration rules 11%
• Ensure the report into longer semi-trailers is completed, published and its results given a fair hearing 10%
• Review VOSA’s transformation strategy 5%
• Work with the industry to establish carbon emissions reporting 5%

There was some variance in responses on the longer semi-trailers report – the overall figure seeing it as important was just 10%. The issue was more important to logistics/contract distribution firms at 23%, but only 5% of own-account operated thought much of it.

This result is repeated if the data was analysed by fleet size rather than by company type: of those with 51 or more vehicles, 23% believed it to be an important issue, but only 8% and 5% respectively of small and medium fleet.

Continued in part 3