Considering the obvious hazards of firework transportation, and indeed every aspect of the manufacture, storage and transportation of fireworks, it might be expected that firework manufacturers and distributors would be more careful than most in checking the qualifications and experience of the transport companies they use for their deliveries.

I would expect a responsible firework distributor to fully vet their transport suppliers to ensure that they fully understand their responsibilities under ADR and have access to a competent Dangerous Goods Safety Advisor, to offer their own advice to the transport company on the safe transport of their goods if necessary, and above all to ensure that the transport company is fully aware of the training that their staff and subcontractors are required to undertake before transporting fireworks.

I was surprised then to read a message posted on one of the leading courier industry websites looking for 70 vans to do 172 journeys over a 3 day period delivering fireworks. There’s nothing particularly wrong with that, although I didn’t think that the company were likely to find 70 suitably qualified drivers on the website in question. I was slightly concerned at this stage that although the company had mentioned the need for various items of safety equipment, they hadn’t mentioned any need for training.

The next day the company followed up their posting with the information “You do not need ADR because the NEC (explosive content) doesn’t exceed 50kg per 3.5 tonne vehicle”. I’m not a DGSA, or even ADR qualified, but this had me very worried on two counts. Firstly, the large multishot fireworks that can be bought from any supermarket typically have an NEQ of over 1kg. Only 50 of these fireworks would exceed the stated 50kg limit, yet the courier company are looking for vans capable of carrying the equivalent of several hundred times that amount. Secondly, and more worryingly, the company were still giving the impression that no training was necessary to carry these goods.

Although they have correctly stated that full ADR isn’t needed as long as the load is below the ‘small load’ threshold, and even identified that safety equipment is still needed, they seem to have completely overlooked the general training (’awareness’) requirements of 8.2.3 of ADR. Of course it’s always possible that they’re planning to put all the drivers through an awareness training session before they’re allowed to collect the goods, but due to the company’s silence when this subject was brought up I suspect that they had no such plans.

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this sort of thing happen – I wrote about an incident a few days ago – but this is the first time I’ve seen a reputable company advertise this type of work to unqualified personnel in such a blatant manner.

There’s still a lot of misunderstanding of the ‘small load’ and ‘limited quantity’ exemptions to ADR, although I’ve written about them in the past and the HSE have a very useful information page explaining the issues.

The golden rule is: IF YOU’RE IN ANY DOUBT AT ALL WHETHER YOU’RE QUALIFIED TO CARRY DANGEROUS GOODS THEN YOU’RE NOT QUALIFIED ENOUGH TO MAKE THE DECISION.

Packages marked with white LQ diamonds can be carried without special training. FIREWORKS CAN NEVER BE CARRIED UNDER AN LQ EXEMPTION.

Loads under the small loads thresholds can be carried with ‘general training’, also known as ‘awareness training’. You’ll still need safety equipment etc, but if you’ve had the awareness training you’ll know that.

There are no fireworks that can be carried by road for hire and reward without the driver and all members of the vehicle’s crew having had a minimum of ‘awareness’ training. For large loads, and even small loads of fireworks in Transport Category 1, full ADR training will be required. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

As the recession, or ‘downturn’ to put an optimistic slant on it, starts to bite, particularly in the building trade, we’re starting to see more and more new entrants to the same day courier industry. It seems an inevitable feature of every economic slowdown that the industry is swamped with out of work tradesman and redundant factory-workers, keen to put their unused van (or their redundancy payment) to use starting a new business for themselves.

It’s an easy enough business to get into, just a van and a mobile phone required. Nowadays it’s apparently not even necessary to have a collection of maps, or even any map-reading skills; just spend £75 on a satnav and you’re ready for work. That’s the theory at least.

There will no doubt be no shortage of local and national same day courier companies waiting to take advantage of these naïve new starters – high fuel prices, low rates and a general downturn in business has pushed many of their existing subcontractors out of the business and they will no doubt be wishing to put a few more vehicles on the road in the run up to Christmas.

There’s often an (incorrect) assumption that the rates offered by the well-known national courier companies will be the ‘going rate’ and that it must be possible to make a reasonable living at those rates. The reality is that some of the larger and better known courier companies pay their subcontractors mileage rates that haven’t changed for many years. I’ve read recently of one national company paying their subcontractors as little as 44p per loaded mile. That’s £88 for a delivery from Manchester to London, with fuel for the journey costing over £40.

As well as the courier companies wanting to cash in on this new source of fresh meat there’s the internet based scammers circling, all waiting to make a few pounds selling manuals on how to be a freelance courier or charging hundreds of pounds to be a member of their non-existent network.

A quick search on Google brings up a multitude of such dubious offers: ‘How To Become A Courier’, ‘Earn £250+ per day as a freelance courier’, “Make £1,500 a week as a courier’, ‘Join our courier network for just £150’, ‘Become a Freelance Courier’, ‘Want to be a courier? Buy our manual for £50’. It’s all a load of bollocks. Nobody makes £1,500 per week profit driving for a living, even after they’ve been in the industry for 10 years. Most experienced owner-drivers of small vans in the same day courier industry have a TURNOVER of less than £800 per week, often much less than that, for long hours and with high expenses to come out of that figure.

I’d recommend that anyone wishing to become a freelance same day courier should first visit the free forums at www.codforum.org.uk (that’s Courier Owner Driver forum, nothing to do with fish!), whatever your question it’s probably been asked and answered on the forums before. There’s also a lot of useful advice on avoiding the scammers.

I might be giving the impression that it’s not possible to make a decent living as a self-employed courier, but that’s not the case at all. It certainly is possible to earn a living but it’s not as simple as buying a manual or paying £120 to join a network or a web-site. Neither is it as simple as writing a few letters to your local courier companies. It will never be an industry where it’s possible to make untold riches with little effort – you’re driving a van around after all, nothing else, and if it was cheaper for these courier companies to employ drivers rather than using subcontractors then they’d do it. Hard work and dedication can build up a reasonable business, but as a get-rich-quick scheme or as a two month stop-gap venture it’s unlikely to give you the financial returns you’re looking for.

So to recap: DON’T pay for advice that you can get for free, DON’T pay registration or enrollment fees in the hope of receiving work and ALWAYS ask for advice on a forum like Codforum before parting with any money, signing on the dotted line or committing yourself to any new business venture. Oh, and don’t call me looking for work – it’s advertised on our website when we have any.

According to this report Mr Wilcox thinks so little of his drivers’ capacity for learning that he believes that ADR training is wasted on them and they should only be trained ‘what to do in the case of an emergency’.

He goes on to say “Drivers are not the best classroom attendees, and whatever is crammed into their heads to get them through the exam is promptly forgotten a week later”. I wonder how Mr Wilcox thinks that his drivers managed to gain their existing professional qualifications, not to mention how he thinks they’ll cope with the new driver CPC qualification. However does he think they manage to drive his company’s vehicles competently and safely if they’re not capable of retaining knowledge for more than a week?

Mr Wilcox makes the case that the traffic staff should have the training because “after all, it’s their decision what is carried and when”.

That might be how Mr Wilcox operates his company, but its certainly not best practice and it’s a possible sign of a company operating on the fringes of legality. It’s for the driver, and no-one else, to decide whether it’s safe for him to take a load out. The driver bears the ultimate responsibility for the safety of his load, his vehicle and himself and no under-trained cretin in a traffic office 200 miles away is entitled to take decisions on his behalf.

It’s this type of attitude – ‘the traffic office knows best’ – which is behind some of the sloppiest and most unsafe practices in the transport industry: drivers’ hours infringements, speeding, overloading, health and safety breaches – all because of the ‘just get it done’ attitude in the traffic office and the pressure put on drivers to do what the traffic staff tells them to do.

Only yesterday I had a call from a same day courier who’d been sent in to an end user to collect a load on behalf of another transport company. The carriage of the load clearly required an ADR trained driver and both the consignor and the transport company were aware of that fact. The owner-driver, without any ADR training and without access to a DGSA was told that she could carry the load without ADR training. Fortunately the driver phoned a friend for advice and was referred to me; I’m not a DGSA but it was clear to me straight away that she shouldn’t be carrying the load.

I’ve seen this happen more times than I can remember – the traffic office numpty mutters something about a load being limited quantities that can be carried without training, ignoring the distinction (whether accidentally or not) between limited quantity packages and small loads. While an experienced commercial driver will (hopefully) know enough to tell the traffic office where they can stick their hazardous goods, the same day courier with a year or so experience driving small vans might well take the word of the traffic staff, or of their customer, as gospel.

I’ve had the exact same experience myself as a courier many years ago. I was sent (by the third largest transport company in the UK) to collect hazardous goods from one of their customers and told that no ADR was required. The second time I went to collect from the customer they asked me if I was ADR trained and virtually threw me off the site when I told them I’d been told that it wasn’t required.

I’d agree with Mr Wilcox that the traffic staff need at least as much ADR training as the drivers, but that doesn’t mean that the drivers need less training. I’d argue that there should be a ‘supervisory’ level of ADR training, above that of a driver but not necessarily to the level of a DGSA, and that every transport operation should have a member of staff trained to that level involved in the planning, organisation and despatch of every load containing dangerous goods.

Many van drivers just assume that the speed limits for their vans are the same as for a private car. In many cases, particularly for smaller vans, they may be right, but for anything bigger than a small van they’re wrong.

The maximum speed limits for all goods vehicles of 3500kg and less, unless lower limits are indicated by signs, is 70mph for motorways, 60mph for dual-carriageways and 50mph for single-carriageway roads. The only exemption is for ‘car-derived vans’ with a maximum loaded weight (GVW) of 2000kg or less, to which the speed limits for cars apply (70, 70, 60).

For many years it seems that the police have interpreted ‘car-derived van’ as meaning any small van with a GVW of 2,000kg or less. This would include many of the vans typically driven by same day couriers, vans like the Escort, Courier, Berlingo/Partner, some Doblos, Combo, Nemo/Bipper/Fiorino, Kangoo, as well as some of the more obvious ‘car shaped’ vans like the Astravan, Fiesta, Corsa and Punto.

In December 2007 the Department for Transport (DfT) issued a document ‘Clarification of national speed limits for vans‘ which I actually ignored at the time because I could only find paraphrased reports of the document rather than the actual document itself. Anyway, I forgot all about it until I stumbled on it this morning while googling for something else. I have to say I’m astonished at how unclear the clarification is and even more astonished at the way they seem to be interpreting the law. Here’s the important bit:

“Q.  Are there any exemptions from these lower speed limits for vans?

A. There is one (small) group of vans which have the same speed limits are cars by virtue of the definitions in Schedule 6 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act of 1984.  These are vans that are both derived from a car chassis and also have a maximum laden weight of no more than 2 tonnes.  This means that the weight of the vehicle and the payload it is designed to be able to carry when added together do not exceed 2 tonnes.  The van design must be a derivative of a car body, it is not sufficient that it looks similar to a particular car.

Q.  Which vans meet the criteria to be considered car derived vans for speed limit purposes?

A. Very few vans will meet the criteria to benefit from the same speed limits as a car.  Those that do are likely to be similar to a Ford Fiesta van, Vauxhall Corsa or Renault Clio van in having maximum payloads of around 500kgs so that when combined with the weight of the vehicle unladen (normally around 1.4 tonnes) the maximum laden weight of the whole vehicle will not exceed 2 tonnes.

What this means is that vans such as the Ford Transit and (and of course the larger panel vans) will not meet the definition of car derived vans set out set out in part IV section 2 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984.  Therefore these vehicles will be subject to speed limits of 50mph on single carriageways and 60 mph on dual carriageways.“

This guidance seems to ignore the very type of vehicle over which there is the most confusion, namely the type of van with a ‘car’ front end and a ‘box’ grafted onto the back. Vans in this class would include the Vauxhall Combo, Citroen Berlingo, Peugeot Partner, Renault Kangoo, Citroen Nemo etc., all of which have a maximum laden weight of under 2 tonnes.

Part IV Section 2 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 states defines a car-derived van as “a goods vehicle which is constructed or adapted as a derivative of a passenger vehicle and which has a maximum laden weight not exceeding 2 tonnes;”. This definition makes no mention of the chassis or the body shape.

To use my examples of vans above; the Vauxhall Combo is clearly a derivative of the Vauxhall Corsa car, albeit with a different chassis and body shape, and could also be said to be ‘based on’ the Vauxhall Combo Kombi – a version of the Vauxhall Combo with rear seats and windows. Arguably the Kombi is based on the van rather than vice versa, but the fact remains that Kombi is a passenger car and shares its body shape and chassis with the van. Similarly the other vans mentioned, although not based on any passenger car, all have an ‘estate car’ (or ‘window van’ if you prefer) version – the Citroen Berlingo Multispace, Peugeot Partner Combi, Renault Kangoo MPV – with the exception of the Citroen Nemo which is the lightest, newest and most car-like to drive of the vans mentioned but does not yet have a ‘windowed’ version.

According to the DfT guidance the Combo, Berlingo, Partner and Kangoo, may possibly be classed as car-derived vans, depending on the importance placed on there being a near-identical passenger version available, while the smaller Citroen Nemo is subject to same speed limits as a 3,500kg Mercedes Sprinter, at least until a ‘car’ version of it becomes available.

This situation is clearly extremely confusing, particularly as the clarification neatly ducks the issue of classifying this particular type of vehicle, instead only mentioning larger and smaller sizes. More confusion is added because these vehicles are actually classified as car-derived vans on their V5 ‘log books’.

I’ve emailed the DfT for some clarification on this and if I don’t receive confirmation that ‘car-derived van’ on the log book means that car speed limits apply I’ll be contacting our local police and maybe ACPO for confirmation of how they interpret the law.

Somewhat of a self-proclaimed courier industry guru, Tim is quite profuse with his advice to other, less experienced, businessmen on how they should run their same day courier businesses. Some would say that he was well qualified to give such advice, having started Speed Couriers from scratch (along with Martin Rutty) and then apparently playing his part in steering it through its troubles in 2001-02.

The collapse of OnDigital, one of Speed’s largest customers, and their foray into the home delivery market caused severe problems for the business back in 2002, so it might be expected that Tim would be more wary than most of allowing a single customer to become too important to the business, of allowing a business with no history of profitable trading to run up a significant (and potentially damaging) amount of debts and of tying the fortunes of his business to a company that specialises in home delivery, particularly at a time when consumer spending is falling and the home delivery market is contracting.

Nevertheless, and despite already having had a warning about Amtrak’s stability and potential profitability when they went into liquidation in January 2007, Tim (or at least CFL) were willing to provide credit to the newly-formed Netfold Ltd, who had bought Amtrak’s business, and apparently continued to supply them with credit after they failed to file their first set of annual accounts at the due time back in March 2008.

By the time that Netfold Limited t/a Amtrak went into administration on 22 August 2008 they obviously owed Courier Finance Ltd a considerable sum, causing them to apparently ‘cease trading’ on 10 September 2008. These debts presumably didn’t date back to the period before Netfold was due to file their accounts – in fact it appears that CFL were still carrying out work for Amtrak/Netfold right up until the time they went into administration. What the hell were they thinking of?

With all this muppetry in mind I was astonished when somebody brought the latest edition of Courier Direct magazine to my attention. On pages 18-19 of issue 1045 there’s an article written by Tim Gilbert “Don’t let the credit crunch crush your courier business underfoot – Tim Gilbert suggests a few measures to recession proof your courier business”.

The article includes some good advice such as “Regular, up-to-date and accurate financial information is the first priority”, “The right action may involve painful decisions, especially for you and your staff, but it’s always better to face the pain than to lose the business”, “To avoid running out of cash you’ll need to be on top of your credit control”, “In the good times, you may have been able to take money out of the business. In the bad times, the bank, or arithmetic, may dictate that you have to put some back in to enable the business to continue to trade”, “insist on good financial information, keep on top of the cashflow, keep debt to a minimum, and put away some personal money for a rainy day”. The phrase Physician, heal thyself comes to mind.

The one piece of advice that is sadly missing is to keep an eye on your major customers’ financial situations on a daily basis – they’re exposed to recession in exactly the same way as you and they might not have taken the necessary steps to recession-proof their businesses.

Presumably the article was written shortly before Amtrak/Netfold’s demise and published at this entirely inappropriate time a few weeks later. It would be very cynical of me to imagine that this important piece of advice was left out of Tim’s article because he wasn’t too keen on CFL’s many suppliers looking too deeply into their obviously precarious financial situation. No, I think that would be to overestimate his intelligence. I think the plain fact is that he’s an arse, a muppet, a fool, and that he spent so much time advising other people on how they should run their businesses that he lost sight of what was happening to his own.

And on that note I’m off – I’ve got a business to recession-proof.

Not content with lying to their original members about their membership fees giving them life membership, they sneakily bought the courier forum www.link4couriers.com while hiding its ownership from its members, saturating the site with advertising for their associated (and I think highly questionable) business ventures and claiming for two years that it was “by far the largest independent forum for couriers and courier owner drivers”. Independent my arse, about as independent as their courier exchange site that was actually run by a company that was quietly in competition with many of its members.

Anyway, it seems that events have overtaken me and I won’t get the chance to launch the scathing attack on their business that I had intended to. It turns out that the experienced businessmen at Courier Finance Ltd decided that after Amtrak had gone into liquidation in 2007 it would be a good idea to extend credit terms to the newly-formed Netfold Ltd, which bought the business from the liquidators. It also appears that they didn’t notice when Netfold failed to file its first accounts on time in March 2008 and seemingly continued to provide credit to them until they went into administration at the end of August 2008.

Visitors to mtvan.com this evening have been greeted with the message: “We regret to announce that Courier Finance Ltd has ceased trading at the end of Wednesday 10th of September 2008.

The closure of Netfold t/a Amtrak owing Courier Finance Ltd considerable money was just too much.

This in turn has brought down MTvan.com.

To those of you who have supported us in the past, our sincere thanks.

To those of you who are owed money our sincere apologies.”

So that’s alright then.

I wonder if we can we expect a new book in the near future - ”Tony’s Guide To Phoenix Companies”?

The article quotes Duncan Coleman of vansunited.co.uk as saying “We’ve not only seen retailers and manufacturers reduce their new and used prices, but they’ve applied finance offers to LCVs that were once the preserve of the car market. Now is the perfect time to buy for those businesses wanting to secure a strong deal.”

I suppose if you’re set on buying a new van in the next year or so then now might be the time to do it, but I’d question whether this is really the perfect time to buy.

While the last six weeks or so have been encouragingly busy for many same day couriers there’s no certainty about the future at all. Whether we’re on the brink of a cataclysmic recession or not it’s clear that many companies aren’t in a position to last the next few months, never mind considering investment in new vehicles.

There are many bargains to be had at auctions at the moment, nearly new vans being auctioned of by liquidators and the hire fleets getting rid of the excess vehicles caused by the slowdown in the construction and transport industries, but the simple fact is that there are more vans available than there are buyers.

I think that the only silver lining, from the perspective of a van dealer, may be transport companies taking the opportunity to replace some of their less efficient vehicles with newer models with better fuel consumption. That’s likely to be bad news for Mercedes with their heavy, thirsty, new shape Sprinter, but good news for Peugeot/Citroen & Fiat with their incredibly efficient little Bipper/Nemo/Fiorino van and for Vauxhall, Renault & Nissan with the almost unbelievably frugal Vivaro/Primastar/Traffic range.

On the whole though I suspect it will be the likes of Norflex, TLS & Reflex that will be the real beneficiaries of the cheap vehicles available at the moment. With high mileage couriers keen to own the newest and most fuel-efficient vehicles, but either unwilling to commit to long leases or unable to arrange finance on good terms, the flexible long-term rental option should quite rightly be seen by many operators as the most appropriate form of vehicle acquisition over the next few years. It would be very brave, if not foolish, to tie up funds by purchasing vehicles, or to commit to a three or four year finance deal, in the current economic environment.

Yes, Amtrak Express Parcels has gone bump for the second time in 20 months. This time it’s Netfold Ltd, the ‘white knight’ that bought the business from the administrators of Amtrak Express Parcels Limited in January 2007, that’s been put into administration.

This one caught me by surprise a bit – I predicted last summer that one of the parcel networks had less than a year to survive, but not Amtrak. As it turns out the two companies that I’d earmarked as possible contenders for the wooden spoon have both reported increasing turnover and profits, the one that I predicted would do great things this year seems to be in terminal decline and now Amtrak, acquired on presumably very good terms from the administrators, has gone into administration.

Alarm bells first started to ring in April when I noticed that Netfold Ltd had failed to file its accounts by the due date. It may seem slightly naïve of me but I’ve always held the belief that a company that doesn’t file its accounts by the due date is either suffering from incompetent management, is unable to pay their accountants’ bill or they have something to hide. While incompetent management is only to be expected from many start-up businesses in their first year of trading, it’s hardly excusable when the business in question has a claimed £80m turnover and is run by a team of experienced businessmen.

One of the company’s administrators from Ernst & Young commented “Amtrak has found trading in the current economic climate challenging. It is a business led by consumer demand and as consumer spending power has weakened Amtrak’s business has suffered.”

Possibly they’re right – Amtrak have been keen to present themselves as a B2C carrier rather than B2B, possibly the slowdown in consumer spending is hitting them worse than other carriers who concentrate on B2B deliveries. If that was the case would it really have been so hard to realign their offering? They already carried out a significant amount of B2B work and they certainly had the infrastructure in place to be as successful in the B2B marketplace as any other carrier. Business Post, Tuffnells and TNT Express, to name a few, have all managed to increase both their turnover and their operating profits in the same economic climate that has apparently caused Amtrak’s problems.

In fact, apart from Amtrak, the only major UK carrier that seems to be experiencing any serious problems at the moment is City Link, and in their case, as I suspect might be the case with Amtrak, the problems are entirely due to bad management. In City Link’s case they made the mistakes of buying back the franchises of depot’s that have formerly been micromanaged by the franchise owners and then tried to manage the depots remotely while at the same time trying to integrate two different networks and divest themselves of accounts that they perceived to be unprofitable.

This level of change has resulted in the merged City Link and Target turning round from being well run and profitable, to losing £29m in the last 6 months.

Maybe it’s ‘change’ that’s the issue, maybe it is just bad management, I don’t know. It seems to me that under normal circumstances all the major parcel networks have developed into major players by learning how to turn a profit using their own particular operating methods; they attract customers who are happy to work within the constraints of those operating methods. When new owners come along, or just new management structures, both the employees and the customers have to adapt to the new owners requirements, methods and management. Some companies (TNT is the perfect example) seem to manage these changes much better than others, maybe realising that the co-operation of all their employees and suppliers, as well as good communication with their customers is the key to success.

Anyway, back to Amtrak and Netfold Ltd, reading between the lines it seems that Business Post may have made a ‘goodwill only’ purchase from the administrators and will be keen to establish business relationships with Amtrak’s former customers. Having a vague idea of the operating methods and capabilities of both companies I can see that many ex-Amtrak customers will feel very comfortable with a changeover to Business Post.

The story as a whole is quite interesting and just goes to show that high fuel prices and congestion can certainly help to focus minds on getting freight off the roads. It was this line that caught my interest though: “international courier firm DHL is looking to move urgent mail from central London to Heathrow by speedboat to avoid congestion in the capital.”

I’ve been unable to find out any more information on DHL’s proposed scheme, an email to their Press Office went unanswered, but it’s certainly an intriguing possibility. However, I looked into the feasibility of a scheme like this a few months ago and quickly discounted the idea as being of little value to the same day courier industry or to any other sector of the express delivery business.

While a speedboat would certainly avoid some road congestion, it’s never going to be able to deliver direct to Heathrow because Heathrow isn’t on the river. So a van, or bikes, would be needed at both ends to transfer the ‘urgent mail’ from the collection point(s) to the speedboat and then from the speedboat to the cargo centre at Heathrow. It’s not clear where the loading and off-loading points would be, but for “central London to Heathrow” I can only imagine somewhere off Lower Thames Street (EC3) and somewhere around the Brentford/Kew Bridge area at the ‘Heathrow’ end; that’s 10 miles by van or bike or 13 miles by water.

So on the face of it DHL might have hit upon a sound idea, a ‘speedboat’ must be able to travel 13 miles on the open water faster than a van, or even a motorbike, can travel 10 miles on congested London roads, mustn’t it?

Well perhaps, but the Thames above Wandsworth Bridge has a speed limit of 9.2mph and it’s 7 miles from Wandsworth Bridge to Kew Bridge – that’s a minimum of 45 minutes. In addition there are plans to introduce a 13.8mph speed limit for the rest of the journey, so that’s another 26 minutes minimum. So an absolute minimum of 71 minutes for the speedboat to get from central London to Kew Bridge plus the time taken to carry out the 2 transhipments from road to water and back again, while ensuring that relevant Aviation Security rules are adhered to, and however long it takes for the ‘urgent mail’ to be delivered and collected by van(s) or bike(s).

While this might be a bit of good publicity for DHL and the sight of a speedboat in full DHL livery passing the Houses of Parliament will certainly make a good publicity shot, I suspect that it will do nothing to reduce DHL’s delivery times from central London, nor will it do much to reduce congestion on London’s roads or reduce DHL’s carbon footprint.

It was also the Telegraph that broke the story last October that these plans had apparently been shelved, or “back burnered” as it was put. It’s now clear that far from being shelved the plans for tests into the viability of national road charging are now at an advanced stage, with trials set to start in January 2010.

Personally I see little problem with the concept of a national road-charging scheme, however it seems clear to me that these trials will be a multi-million pound waste of money with huge potential profits for consultancy firms but little, if any, chance of the plans actually reaching fruition. It seems entirely likely that there will be at least one change of government before any national road-charging scheme is introduced and I don’t believe that any party will have the political will to see this through.

It’s only necessary to look at what’s happening in Manchester at the moment to see that motorists and the business community will use any argument possible to promote their own self-interested views on having to pay for the congestion they cause.

The first argument the Government need to get past is that of the Civil Liberties camp. While the real-time tracking of vehicles seems to scare these people to death, they seem to happily ignore the fact that they can already be tracked by their mobile phone usage, by ANPR cameras, by CCTV and by their use of credit cards and banking facilities. Presumably, if the will was present, measures could be built into any road-charging system to avoid its use to actively track and report on motorists’ movements; although law-enforcement agencies already seem to be keen to make use of their ability to track people by the other means mentioned.

Motorists will no doubt scream that they are already paying too much for motoring costs, particularly fuel, and that they’re already paying a yearly flat-rate charge (VED or ‘Road Tax’) AND a charge that is effectively based on their fuel consumption and the miles travelled (excise duty on road fuel). The argument goes that the amount the government receive from motorists far exceeds the amount that they spend on road maintenance and new road-building.

The Telegraph here, are pushing the headline rate of £1.30 per mile; leading one contributor to comment: “On the specific topic of road pricing: at £1.30 per mile, the round trip to visit my elderly mother (motorway all the way) will cost me an ADDITIONAL £780. What kind of world are these people living in?”. The £1.30 per mile is of course the proposed rate for using the most congested roads in the country at absolute peak times. Given the apparent hardship (and moaning) caused by the average 3-4p/mile increase in fuel prices over the last few months I would say that it’s entirely unlikely that the Government would try and introduce an average charge per mile of anything approaching this claimed amount.

Of course I have no information at all about the proposed charges, other than what’s been suggested by Government sources and speculated in the press already. Based on what I’ve read, common sense and maybe a bit of wishful thinking, I could imagine that Vehicle Excise Duty (‘road tax’) could be abolished (there’s no need for yearly insurance checks now that the system’s automated) and that 15-20p/litre could be cut off fuel prices, putting our fuel prices on a par with the rest of Europe, and a corresponding amount, say 3p mile, charged as the base level charge for uncongested roads during off-peak hours. During peak times the most congested routes (think Hammersmith Road, the M25 at Heathrow or the main commuter route into any major city) would be charged at something approaching the top end of the scale. The extra charge above the base level would be a disincentive to using commuter routes at peak times, much like the proposed Manchester congestion charge.

As the decrease in car use due to the current high fuel prices has shown, car use isn’t entirely necessary in many situations – we only use them because they’re convenient and, at least before the higher fuel prices, cheap to use compared to the alternatives. We all know that traffic congestion is a problem in this country and most of us accept that we can’t cover every inch of space in the country with tarmac to solve the problem. Unfortunately many of us also take the attitude that other motorists are the ones causing the congestion and our own journeys are somehow more important.

The reality is that the motorway and major road network has been developed over the years to encourage the economic development of the country as a whole and specific regions in particular, primarily by allowing good access for freight traffic. That the improved road system has also encouraged extended ‘drive-to-work’ zones and the emergence of the long-distance commuter is to most of us an unwelcome side-effect.

There’s no absolute requirement for anybody to commute 70 miles each way by car at peak times. People only choose to do it because the opportunity’s available to them and the financial rewards gained from driving such a long distance make it worthwhile. Remove the opportunity, or make it financially unattractive, and people are quick to find alternative solutions. If the road network wasn’t there, or it became prohibitively expensive to use it at peak times then people could choose to work closer to home, or live closer to work, or commute by another means, or even work from home. Everyone must accept that the road network can never expand indefinitely to meet all the demands that will potentially be made of it.

The final group who will demand consideration is the road transport industry, who of course have their own set of priorities, foremost of which is to be allowed to compete with foreign hauliers on an equal basis, without being crippled by the higher fuel tax levied in the UK. I wonder if it could possibly be the demands of the road transport industry that have caused the Government to re-examine their options on road pricing.

If VED on commercial vehicles was abolished, or at least reduced to a reasonable level, and duty on fuel was cut so that it was on a par with other European countries then the UK transport industry would have the level playing field they’ve been demanding since the early nineties. It’s clear that UK based commercial vehicles could be charged using the same system that would apply to private vehicles, although in the case of commercial vehicles a flat-rate per mile charging scheme would make more sense, rather than the proposed congestion based system. The question would remain on how foreign lorries would be charged for using the UK road network.

In April 2002, in response to fuel price protests, the Government concluded that foreign operators should be charged for using the UK road system on the basis of the miles travelled on UK roads. This system was originally to have been introduced by early 2006 but the proposal was subsequently quietly dropped, without too much fanfare and, surprisingly, little if any action by the Road Haulage Association, the Freight Transport Association et al.

As far as I know there was never any firm reason given for the dropping of the Lorry Road User Charge scheme, but reading between the lines it seems to me that the sticking point may have been the problem of interoperability between the UK’s proposed system and systems proposed for other EU states. Germany has had just such system in operation since January 2005 without any worries about interoperability – manual toll payments are made if the vehicle isn’t fitted with the automatic charging equipment.

Could it be that the Government have resurrected their plans for national road charging in order to introduce per mile charging for foreign registered vehicles and placate the increasingly rebellious road haulage industry, while covering the overall cost of introducing these measures by including them in the costs for general road-charging? The timing of this apparent U-turn seems to point firmly towards this, but could it be that the Government have just ‘suggested’ to the road haulage industry that the upcoming trials are leading towards the road charging situation that the haulage industry wants, merely to keep the hauliers from any embarrassing protests until after the proposed trials have been concluded?

Due to their current unpopularity it seems clear that the current Government are likely to avoid calling a general election until the absolute latest opportunity; by 3rd June 2010 at the latest. Considering the political benefits to be gained from avoiding the hauliers’ ongoing fuel protests while handing over the political hot potato of road-charging to their successors it seems perhaps hardly surprising that the Government have adopted this new stance.

I’ve warned many times of the dangers of running businesses like this and it seems from anecdotal evidence that some companies are finally having to count the cost of paying their suppliers late.

With the soaring cost of fuel and the general slowdown in the economy it seems that some transport company owners have decided that it will be more profitable to cease their transport operations and concentrate on collecting the outstanding debts accumulated under the late payment legislation.

The Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 (see http://www.payontime.co.uk for further information) gives businesses a statutory right to claim daily interest from other businesses for the late payment of commercial debt. In addition businesses have the right to a compensation payment of between £40 and £100 for each invoice which is paid later than agreed terms. If no terms are agreed then the terms default to the later of 30 days from the day the service is performed (for pre-agreed amounts) or 30 days from the date the cost is confirmed.

Both the interest and the compensation payments are chargeable on each invoice paid late, are payable on demand and are claimable up to six years after the date they become payable – i.e. up to six years after the payment becomes late. They are payable even after the initial debt has been paid in full.

Companies are potentially storing up a time bomb by paying their customers late. As an example, a courier company which carries out 5 local jobs per week for a customer over a 6 year period, each one of which is invoiced on a separate invoice and each one of which is paid late, could potentially issue a claim after 6 years for £62,400 against that one customer in late payment compensation charges alone.

If a company issues just 25 invoices each week which are paid late then after 6 years they have ‘earned’ over £300,000 in late payment compensation charges, assuming their customers are still trading. For a transport company earning minimal profits in the current financial climate this is a tempting alternative income stream.

Of course many companies are reluctant to claim late payment charges, but the debt exists whether they claim them at the time or not. What seems to be happening at the moment is that companies are looking back at debts that have been paid late in the past and if they’ve not traded with the customer for a while, or they don’t really care if they lose the customer’s business, they’re putting in their claims under the late payment legislation.

We’ve recently received a claim such as this from an ex-supplier for 3 invoices which he believed were paid late in early 2006. The supplier actually ceased trading a few months after the invoices were issued but being a sole trader the individual concerned has chosen to supplement his current income by milking the customers of his previous business.

In our case he was unsuccessful – we’d settled all the invoices with his factoring company on the day they were received; we assume that the factoring company (as they often seem to) had applied our payments to the wrong invoices or the wrong account. We were saved from having to pay £121.17 purely because we’d both paid the invoices on time AND kept a proper record of the date the invoices were received and the date the invoices were paid. In the latter respect we were helped because we only ever pay our suppliers by BACS or online banking and always keep a proper record of the date the payment leaves our account.

I would suggest that anyone wishing to protect themselves against future claims under the late payment legislation takes the following steps:

1. Keep a record of all debts as they are incurred. Using a Purchase Order system will help achieve this but it’s not essential. When you receive goods or services from your supplier make a note of the date, the supplier’s name and the amount due and check off each invoice received against your list at the time of receipt. If you’ve not received an invoice within a couple of weeks of receiving the goods or service then contact the supplier to chase the invoice – fax or email is best because you can create an audit trail of having requested the invoice.
2. Record any invoices as they’re received. Date stamp every received invoice and check it off against your list of due invoices.
3. Pay the invoice within the agreed terms. If you didn’t agree terms at the time you ordered the goods/services then check if you were expected to have read and agreed to the suppliers standard terms before ordering. If no terms were agreed or specified by the supplier then pay the invoice within 30 days of either receiving the goods/services or the invoice date, whichever is earlier.
4. Notify supplier of queries or disputes. If the invoice is disputed or queried then inform the supplier at the earliest opportunity and keep a record of the date that the dispute/query was raised and the date of the response. If the dispute/query is resolved then pay within the original agreed term (or 30 days if no agreement) or within  a reasonable time (say 7 working days) of the resolution of the dispute. Keep a full record of all relevant actions, the date, time and the people involved.
5. Pay your suppliers by BACS or online banking. It’s easier to prove that the payment left you account on the right day than it is to prove that you didn’t  date all your cheques 3 weeks before you sent them. We save a screenprint of every online banking payment so that we can quickly check when payments were made without contacting the bank for confirmation. The screenprint doubles as a Remittance Advice for sending to our suppliers by email.
6. Agree payment terms in advance. If there’s an ‘understanding’ with your supplier that you will pay on terms other than 30 days from service (or 30 days from invoice) then ask your supplier to agree to the terms in writing before any work is carried out. Stick to the terms that you’ve agreed.

All this is a lot harder to write down than it is to do. It takes no real investment in time other than the initial planning of your system. Your list of invoices you’re due to receive should already be available in your booking or accounting system. If not then a simple list in Excel (or even in a notepad) of every purchase you make, will be a useful source of information for your business in any case. We run just such a list in Excel, revenue and cost recorded for each job, and the supplier’s and customer’s name. We can see profitability of a day by day basis, see which suppliers haven’t invoiced us and easily see which customers produce the most profit for us.

On a closing note, it should be noted that these late payment charges are assignable. Even if your mate Joe’s business doesn’t charge you when you pay late, the subsequent owners, or liquidators, of the business may chase you for late payment charges.

If it’s not happened already it seems only a matter of time before companies are set up to buy the rights to accrued late interest charges from failing businesses. When this happens there will undoubtedly be a lot of businesses whose bad payment record will come back to bite them.

You may be interested in this page, giving the specifics of a claim for late payment charges that we made against an ex-customer.

The ex-customer engaged a top firm of solicitors to avoid paying the claim, presumably at condiderable cost, but ended up paying our original claim plus court costs anyway.

I’m very confident that we would have won the case no matter what, but the notice about late payment charges on each of our invoices avoided us having to go to the trouble of actually proving the case in court.

In 2002, after much lobbying and with the approval of the EU, the UK introduced a lower rate of duty for biodiesel. At the time the biodiesel production was limited to a few enthusiastic companies who mainly produced their biodiesel from waste vegetable oil (WVO), used cooking oil from Fish & Chip shops etc, and before the introduction of this welcome ‘subsidy’, were able to produce fuel at a price that was slightly higher than traditional diesel fuel.

The introduction of the reduced rate of duty sparked a lot more interest in the production of biodiesel, increasing the demand (and the cost) for WVO and pushing biodiesel producers towards the use of virgin vegetable oil (VVO), which is anyway easier to process.

Move forward to 2008 and suddenly biofuel production seems a lot less ‘green’ than it was. Higher oil prices have increased the viability of fuel production from VVO and farmland throughout the world is being turned over to the production of oil and ethanol producing crops, forcing food production onto previously uncultivated land and leading to deforestation, worldwide food shortages and ultimately increasing the levels of greenhouse gas emissions.

The UK Government had already announced that biodiesel will be taxed at the same rate as normal diesel from 2010 but it had been hoped in some quarters that this would be cancelled to underline their ‘green’ credentials.

However, the Renewable Fuels Agency (RFA), the UK Government agency set up to ensure that biofuels account for 5% of all fuels sold on UK forecourts by 2010, has now released a damning report on biofuels – calling for a significant slowdown in the introduction of biofuels.

The RFA’s Gallagher Review calls for controls to put into place to reduce the demand for biofuels until controls are put into place to ensure that the effects on world food supply and the inappropriate use of prime agricultural land, as well as land that is not currently used for agriculture, is minimised.

Quite where this leaves the UK’s thriving small-scale biodiesel production industry is unclear. With oil prices at their current levels the business is just about sustainable without the 20p/litre duty reduction. But the price reduction is the only thing that encourages most users to use biodiesel; its use is still seen as a bit risky by many transport operators and there’s always a worry of warranty issues in the case of engine failure.

If oil prices continue to rise then it’s expected that the cost of both WVO and VVO will rise at a similar rate, leaving biodiesel with, at best, a few pence price advantage over normal diesel.

Many operators that use biodiesel, particularly those using fuel derived from WVO, are committed to using biodiesel for ethical reasons, for public relations reasons, or just for that extra bit of ‘greenwash’. It could be that in two years time these will be the only major producers and users of biodiesel in the UK.

This article about the proposed M4 toll road demonstrates my point perfectly. It reports ‘warnings’ from the RHA that “plans for an M4 toll relief road would cripple haulage businesses delivering into Wales and seriously damage the economy”.

RHA regional director Mike Farmer is reported as suggesting that a private company builds the road and then the Government repays it back over a period of time, based on traffic counts on the new road, or “shadow tolling” as it’s known.

While the PFI shadow toll suggestion is certainly workable, it’s hardly a fair solution to the problem. The A55 extension across Anglesey is funded by just such a scheme, the 20 mile stretch of dual carriageway is expected to have cost every Welsh resident over £130 by the time the road’s been paid for in 2026. This is for a road which provides no benefit whatsoever to the vast majority of the Welsh population and is mainly used by foreign hauliers who pay nothing at all towards the cost and don’t benefit the Welsh economy in any way.

Mr Farmer is obviously fully aware that there’s already a substantial toll for entering South Wales via the Severn Bridges; has that crippled haulage businesses delivering into Wales and seriously damaged the economy?

Has the M6 Toll crippled haulage businesses in the Midlands and seriously damaged the economy? It hasn’t because, as Mr Farmer points out: “hauliers have snubbed it due to time savings of less than 20 minutes being achieved, £11 for 17 minutes doesn’t stack up economically”. No doubt the hauliers would be happy enough to use it if it was paid for through “shadow tolling” as Mr Farmer suggests the proposed M4 relief road should be. So should the whole of England be contributing towards a road that saves a few truckers, many of them foreign, less than 40 minutes a day? 42,000 motorists per day do pay to use the M6 Toll, removing 42,000 vehicles from the M6 and helping to keep the delays for the truckers using the route down to (an apparently acceptable) 17 minutes.

Incidentally, I should point out to Mr Farmer that the M6 Toll is £7.66 plus VAT (£9 including VAT), not £11 as he claims, and is the same price for a Transit van as it is for an articulated lorry. I’m surprised that a regional director of the RHA who feels he’s qualified to discuss the relative benefits of a major road toll scheme, doesn’t seem to know how much his own members are being charged for the use of the only comparable scheme in the UK.

£7.66 seems a bit expensive to me for a Transit van, especially considering the relative amount of wear caused to the road by larger vehicles, but we still often use the M6 Toll when we’re carrying time-sensitive goods, the road appears to be widely used by many other same day couriers as well. Mr Farmer should be happy that his members are able to drive a fully loaded artic along the M6 Toll for the same price.

If the delays on the existing M4 aren’t bad enough to make motorists want to use a new toll road, then they can continue to put up with what are obviously very minor delays. If the delays are serious enough to warrant a lot of money being spent to improve the problem then why shouldn’t it be the people who benefit from the expenditure who pay for it? Why should a factory worker in Wrexham contribute towards making a Polish lorry driver’s day 20 minutes shorter when he delivers to Cardiff?

There are congested motorways throughout the UK and it’s clear that in most cases no new roads are planned to ease the congestion. As we’ve learnt from previous roadbuilding projects, new motorways soon fill up with motorists pushing the boundaries of their ‘drive to work’ area, causing extra congestion on feeder routes. Put simply, if you were to extend, for example, the M65 so that it went from Preston to York there would be people from both ends who would decide that it was a reasonable daily commute, the existing stretch of motorway would immediately become more congested than it is now and the local roads would all be full of cars heading for the motorway. The M6 Toll is one of the few major road projects that hasn’t caused this type of problem – precisely because people have to pay to use it. If it had been free it would already be suffering from congestion.

The effect on the same day courier industry has been largely mirrored, or possibly even magnified, in the transport industry in general.

The RHA and the hauliers are still, of course, bleating about haulage companies going out of business because of high fuel prices. The reality is that the only haulage companies who are suffering because of high fuel prices are those who didn’t have the foresight to tie their customers into contracts with provision for automatic fuel surcharges, or who haven’t had the resolve (or the finances) to insist on higher rates from customers who aren’t tied in to contracts with such provisions.

Sure, there’s less work for haulage companies (and couriers) because of the economic downturn but it’s not fuel prices that are the real problem. Until the recent sharp increase in oil prices the price of road fuel had actually risen at a slower rate than inflation over a period of many years, allowing hauliers to keep their customer rates artificially low.

Relying on continuing low oil prices to keep haulage rates low was always bound to leave the industry at the mercy of the international oil markets. We’re now at the very beginning of a sustained increase in oil prices driven by the spiralling demands for fuel, plastics and fertilizer in China, India and the other developing economies.

Hauliers point at foreign truckers with cheap diesel as the root of all their problems, but the higher fuel prices are actually shifting the balance in the UK hauliers’ favour in that respect. As the price of oil increases, the disparity in the favour of hauliers buying fuel in countries with lower tax on fuel actually decreases and using foreign hauliers becomes less attractive.

It’s not customers shifting to using foreign hauliers that’s been the recent problem – it’s UK hauliers willing to run at unsustainable rates to ‘win’ work from their competitors. Eventually any transport company adopting this business model will fall by the wayside – fuel costs are fuel costs, there’s no amount of innovative thinking that makes it much cheaper for A.N. Other Haulage to shift 24 tonnes across the country than any other transport company. Urgency, short notice and catch-loads might make the difference, but for bog-standard trailer-loads from A to B, costs are costs are costs. Your costs are the same as his costs are the same as my costs. Joe Bloggs might be able to do it cheaper until he goes bust next month and Polski Truckering Co-operative might always be there as a low quality (I’m part Polish so I can say that) alternative but British industry (what there is left) relies on Fred in Despatch being able to speak to Bill in Traffic or Load Planning and get the job sorted.

The UK’s transport industry isn’t being killed by high fuel prices but individual transport companies are committing suicide by charging rates that don’t reflect their actual costs. That works both ways as well – I’ve been as surprised by some of the unrealistic inflated prices we’ve heard about recently as I have by some of unrealistically high prices.

According to the Mirror the recent high fuel prices have been causing more motorists to cut back on servicing their cars and because of that more motorists have been stranded by breakdowns.

Apparently an AA spokesman warned: “More and more motorists are running their cars until the warning light comes on.

“Apart from the risk of breaking down on a busy road, it also causes longterm damage to the car.”

I don’t think that I’ve read this particular AA survey, I certainly can’t find it on their website, but I’d guess from the next paragraph of the Mirror report (“So far this year 532 more callouts a week have involved flat batteries – which can be caused by running on empty”) that the AA spokesman was talking about the low fuel warning light rather than any other warning light.

I can’t see any connection between cutting back on servicing and running out of fuel, or for that matter any connection between a flat battery and “running on empty”. I particularly disagree with what appears to be a claim by the AA that running your car with the low fuel warning light on can cause long-term damage to the car. I suspect that this is more a bad summary by the Mirror of an AA press release rather than an accurate report of inaccurate statements from the AA.

I’ve habitually run vehicles until the tank’s virtually empty for many years. I’ve had several vehicles that have done over 250,000 miles running like this without any problems and many other vehicles which reached 100,000+ before being off-hired, written off, sold etc, all without any long term damage to the engine or fuel system caused by “running on empty” before virtually every refuel.

The subject of motorists running out of fuel because of high fuel prices cropped up at work a couple of months ago. One of our freelance same day couriers – a van driver from London with loads of experience and with the same laid back attitude (does as much work as he feels like doing and he’s happy as long as his rent’s paid at the end of the month and he’s got enough left over for beer and fags) that used to be so common with bike couriers in the 80s and 90s. He’s so used to putting a tenner’s worth of fuel into his van every 80 miles or so that he didn’t bother to get his fuel gauge replaced when it broke a year ago. Of course fuel prices rose so quickly that he suddenly found out while he was on the way to an urgent collection that he’s now only getting 60 miles to his tenner.

A few days after this happened I mentioned it to someone outside the business while chatting about the impact of fuel prices on the courier industry. He wasn’t particularly aware that fuel prices had gone up at all – he doesn’t look at fuel prices, just puts £20 in his tank every Sunday at Tesco when he does the weekly shop and puts a full tank in (Tesco again) once or twice a month when he goes for a long drive at weekends or on holiday. He’d noticed over the last few weeks that his low fuel light had been coming on before he’s fuelled up on the Sunday, something that had never happened before. He’d actually had the main dealer look at the car TWICE investigating the high fuel consumption. Of course they couldn’t find anything wrong (although they kindly charged him £80 for replacing the air filter) because there wasn’t anything wrong – he was getting the same miles per gallon but less miles per pound.