Courier Business Stuff

As far as I remember they’re demanding a fuel duty rebate FOR VEHICLES OPERATING ON O LICENCES ONLY.

If they get their way it will be cheaper to operate a 7.5t than your Luton.

Same as the RHA demands everyone got behind – rebated blue diesel for operators of O licenced vehicles. Useless for most ‘couriers’.

Posted under Protests & Strikes

Stephen Montgomery, at the beginning of your posting you say that because Stobart and Curries are the ‘big boys’ they’re able to enforce a surcharge on their customers whereas you can’t. Later on you say that because you want to increase your rates you’re losing a customer to Curries. I can’t quite reconcile the two statements.

Unless these larger companies are secretly refining their own oil they have exactly the same business pressures as you and I, often with the added problems of high corporate overheads and shareholder accountability. If they’re able to ‘enforce’ rate increases it’s only because they had the foresight to enter into contracts that allow them to do so. The only real advantage that the ‘big boys’ have over smaller companies is more efficient vehicle utilisation, and a well run smaller company can beat the best of the big boys on that score.
 

Posted under Protests & Strikes

“Transaction2007 have decided to release the date and time of protest action earlier than scheduled. This is to enable the motorist and public to better prepare themselves for the coming action. This will be a nationwide protest extending to Northern and Southern Ireland.A date of Saturday 15th December 2007 at 10:00am has been decided for protest action. This date was decided by members as the best possible to enable those who would normally be working during the week to attend. This action will be initiated at a refinery or storage depot somewhere near you. Anyone wishing to support action is requested to make your way there at the alotted time. Transaction again wish to emphasise the importance of legal protesting.

Further; the members of Transaction2007, many being RHA members themselves, request that the Road Haulage Association go forward to the HM Treasury in an attempt to avert this very delicate situation due on Saturday. A way forward is sought by all sides concerned.”

www.transaction-2007.com

Load of bollocks if you ask me. The last protest caught the government and the fuel supply industry by surprise. The ‘fuel shortages’ were caused almost entirely by Joe Public panicking and rushing to grab as much fuel as possible ‘just in case’; I’m told that there are measures in place to stop that happening again.
 

Posted under Protests & Strikes

If you’re going to threaten not to vote for Labour because of high fuel duty then you’d better go and find out what the Conservatives or the Libdems would do if they were in power.
 

Posted under Protests & Strikes

someone wrote:
“what other product is over 50% tax?

Anything else taxed to this level would simply be given up!
fags, booze etc

(saying that I dunno what % of duty is on them Anyone?)”

Prepare to be shocked. I’m not sure how much cigarettes cost at the moment but I’m guessing around £5.50 for 20? Based on that:

82p is VAT, £2.17 goes on duty at 10.865p per cigarette and then a further £1.21 goes on the 22% duty charged on the final retail price.

So £4.20 out of your £5.50 goes towards lowering my income tax bill. 

Alcohol duty isn’t as bad but it’s still £7.82 duty on a 1 litre bottle of 40% alcohol, plus the VAT on the retail price. So for a £12 (?) bottle that’s £7.82 duty and £1.79 VAT – £9.61 total.

Posted under Protests & Strikes

We are hitting £106.9 a litre in some areas now, soon we will be faced with paying £1.10 a ltr.   Philip Hollsworth offered this good idea:

This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the ‘don’t buy petrol on a certain day campaign that was going around last April or May! The oil companies just laughed at that because they knew we wouldn’t continue to hurt ourselves by refusing to buy petrol. It was more of >an inconvenience to us than it was a problem for them. BUT,whoever thought of this idea, has come up with a plan that can really work.

Please read it and join in!

Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of a litre is CHEAP, we need to take a ggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the market place not sellers. With the price of petrol going up more each day, we consumers need to take action. The only way we are going to see the price of petrol come down is if we hit someone in the pocket by not purchasing their Petrol! And we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves. Here’s the idea:

For the rest of this year DON’T purchase ANY petrol from the two biggest oil companies (which now are one), ESSO and BP.

If they are not selling any petrol, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit. But to have an impact we need to reach literally millions of Esso and BP petrol buyers. It’s really simple to do!!

PLEASE HOLD OUT UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES TO THE 69p a LITRE RANGE

It’s easy to make this happen. Just forward this email, and buy your petrol at Shell, Asda,Tesco, Sainsburys, Morrisons Jet etc. i.e. boycott BP and Esso!

What a load of bollocks.

1) Firstly, Esso & BP aren’t the same company to start with. Esso is owned by Exxon Mobil Corp. listed on the NYSE while BP plc is listed on the LSE.

2) From your £1/litre, 50.35p goes to the government in excise duty and a further 14.89p is VAT. To sell at 69p/litre the oil companies would require the garage to have a cost price of less than 10p/litre. The open-market price of crude oil is currently around 24p/litre, add the cost of refining and distributing the fuel and a small amount of profit for the service station operators and there’s very little room for any price reductions.

3) Esso & BP service stations don’t necessarily sell fuel from Esso & BP refineries – it’s as likely to have been bought on the open market or by long term contract and shifted around the world in ships and shifted around the country in tankers and by underground pipes. The diesel in the BP truck you see delivering to the local service station is as likely to have started out in a Shell refinery as in a BP refinery.

4) There’s an overall shortage of diesel production in Europe (that’s why diesel prices have been higher than unleaded for the last few years) – any surplus would be quickly bought up on the open market. In the unlikely event that a boycott had any effect on the retail chain the same fuel would just end up in the same vehicles but sold through different garages. Esso and BP would continue to make their profits, as they do now, from extraction and refining.

The only way that fuel’s ever going to become much cheaper is if the Government (whichever party) cut their take of excise duty and VAT. If they did that they’d still have to raise the revenue from somewhere, so some other tax would have to go up.

I’m all for high fuel prices: they help keep the rabble off the roads and they discourage businesses from using their own transport for deliveries.

Posted under Protests & Strikes

Picket lines aren’t what they were pre-Thatcher Fred. I think they’re only allowed 6 people on picket and they’re not allowed to obstruct vehicles.

TNT established itself in the UK by being seen on the news every night for a year crossing the Wapping picket line in the 80s.

Posted under Employment, Protests & Strikes, Uncategorized