Haulage Companies and Never-Never Land - By: Norman Dulwich

One of the things that you just have to admit is that haulage companies tend to look on the bright side of life. Sometimes though, this optimism may lead to accusations of living in a mythical but Utopian never-never land.

Delivery planning

Some people in road haulage still like to think that the UK is in the 1960s when traffic jams were a comparative rarity. You'll see evidence of this when they sometimes estimate how long it is going to take the vehicle to get from A to B. Yes, it may have been possible to do it in that time 50 years ago, but unless your truck is equipped with a time machine then today's transit times are going to take, on average, rather longer than they did half a century ago.

Capacity

In theory, the business of working out how much the vehicle can carry, is quite easy. It should be just a question of looking at the cubic capacity, the item’s weight and how much space is available on the vehicle concerned. Unfortunately, life is rarely that simple. As some haulage companies know, to their cost, the cubic capacity of a load and its weight don't always reveal in advance that the object has a huge projection or a very challenging weight distribution with all its weight being concentrated in one small area. This sometimes leads to the ‘the driver will sort it out somehow’ philosophy that is much loved in never-never land.

Jim’ll fix it territory

This is a well-known and much loved region of never-never land for haulage companies.
You usually enter it in situations such as where a driver telephones in to the office to report something major, such as a broken axle, only to receive helpful advice such as “don't you have a screwdriver with you?” A particularly good illustration is when a vehicle hasn't been able to ship due to a ferry breakdown and the driver is asked, “have you offered to try and help fix it?”

Following the yellow brick road

Driving off with your vehicle into the sunset and singing a happy song as you go, is a lovely image and one that seems very prevalent in some haulage companies. Happy as this may be, if the yellow brick road happens to eventually terminate in a rural track that goes up the side of a steep hill to your final delivery point, then your good humour might well evaporate as you realise you need to try and navigate this little track with your 15m low-loader rig!

The final analysis

However, when all is said and done, no matter how off the mark some scenarios on the job may be, it is probably nicer if haulage companies are like this rather than being all hard-bitten and cynical!

About the Author

Norman Dulwich is a Correspondent for Haulage Exchange, the leading online trade network for the road transport industry across the UK and Europe. It provides services for haulage companies to buy and sell road transport and delivery work in the domestic and international markets.

Article Directory Source: http://www.articlerich.com/profile/Norman-Dulwich/96057

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