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Lorry Drivers vs Truckers (or the difference between Us and US)

Lots of vehicle orientated stories in the old HSG this week. We had the usual “period of growth” and “Road versus Rail” type stuff but for me there were three which simply could not be ignored if you have the soul of a big wheel man.

Sitting between my two personal favourites was a little piece on the reform of cabotage regulations by the EU. What? Pulse not racing in anticipation? You must be of the American persuasion. A trucker not a haulier then. For many in the UK industry this is potentially the story of the week. “Comin’ over here, nickin’ our jobs” comes the cry. And, all said and done, that’s often not too far off the mark. People don’t mind a free market if the playing fields are level. It’s just at the moment hauliers in certain quarters of Europe feel there’s a decided slope and they’re always kicking uphill.

The problem for this lies in those two elderly enemies of open markets, culture and avarice. Avarice is easily explained, if someone can make more money by circumventing the rules certain amongst us always will. Stiffer penalties can help but greed will out. It’s right up there with sex, death and taxes as a given.

The cultural thing is a different creature entirely. The view of a UK resident to the EU is somewhat, (somewhat? Vastly what, more like) different than his brothers in certain nearby countries. Now I’m not saying they ignore size limits, but a Spanish fisherman would net sperm for market if he could but trawl a mesh small enough, and certain Frenchmen have been known to die of food poisoning for just seeing a piece of cheddar chez Carrefour. You take my point, just as many Englishmen retch at the thought of eating snails there are, at various levels of each society and amongst many individual’s, ingrained differences which make up the rich cultural stew of the EU. So whilst the clampdown on cabotage will be welcomed by many it will equally be resented, and more likely ignored, by many others.

Just to prove a point here follows a fine example of a driver from one country learning the ropes in his new adopted home:-

Or another short one:-

Give those men a job ! (somewhere else please).

Now if you think that the pan European differences are not to be wondered at then so be it. Hauliers, and many ordinary folk, in various parts of the EU will read some of the things our trucking cousins across the pond have had to say this week mouths agape.

Sandwiching that cabotage story were two classics which illustrate the vast gulf between nations. Whether it’s the effect of strong unionisation in the industry across the US or just that “right to bear arms” mentality to defend one’s freedom that exists in the old colony, I for one was flabbergasted at what transpired.

In the piece on the 25th September Barack was getting barracked for his choice of advisor on transport. It seems that BO’s buddy is a gal who lives and breathes trucking, or rather truck management. There is immense resistance by the boys in blue collars to fitting any form of tacho in the cab. They like them good ‘ol running sheets, you remember, the ones you needed a pencil and a rubber for. The new head girl is thought to support that view and likely to delay any innovation. If she does, considering safety is the primary motive, some would say Luddite about covers that.

The second piece published today is even more archaic. Apparently certain people in the good old US of A feel it’s their God given right to text who they goddam please whilst driving an 18 wheel special at 60mph. Now I’m a supporter of freedom of speech, I hate GATSO’s and night time speed limits on open uninhabited roads, but please, please don’t tell me you can read and write texts whilst driving.

This one’s right up there with DUI, nun buggery and liking Des O’Connor records.

Listen carefully, I Shall Say This Only Once – STOP IT !

We’ve all done it, but it’s stupid and dangerous and therefore it should always be illegal. I reckon for once the UK has got this about right. Cause an accident whilst texting or with a phone in your hand and you will get the large black book chucked in your face (not to mention possibly soap monitor duty in the shower). If you need to communicate (and we all do now to stay in front) then it’s a hands free unit and nothing else.

Even then people crash and die who would have never had the accident in the “good old days”.

Come to think of it they probably would. They’d of fallen asleep whilst they filled in their log books after driving 20 hours straight.

Stay Cool ! It's Only Armageddon

A timely reminder this week for the gang of lads and lasses attending the Copenhagen Conference on reduction of Carbon etc. etc.

There is a real danger that all of us have become so obsessed with talking about cleaning up kitchen Earth that it will either 1) Get boring  or   2) become passe dahling.

Now, I'm not too sure which of the chosen deities you may follow or, like the Captain here, you may have your own ideas on Darwin, dinosaurs and the meaning of life etc. But whatever your chosen God, 6 arms, white beard or don't draw his pal or your head explodes, he, she, it or fate certainly punched us in the arm the other day.

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The coverage we gave the Ozzie dust storm in the HSG this week was essentially brief, We are after all a freight and shipping mag and, although there was a logistical element (airports and port closures) it wasn't about a container ship going down (God forbid) or another bit of piracy from the Peoples Front of Somalia, black hand gang chapter.

Despite this we managed to mention that our ashless cousins had to tolerate a quite spectacular array of natural misdemeanours. The worst dust storm ever, hailstones the size of cricket balls (no further comments lads - we love you really, despite the fact your great grandad might have stolen great uncle Billy's sheep), a touch of Earth Parkinsons, torrential rain of Biblical ( Koranical ? Vedasical ? Guru Granth Sahibical ? OK I'm showing off now) proportions.

Point is, despite the fact Bondai bravely stayed open for business, we got a timely warning of just how tenuous our existence on this little lump of rock actually is. If we weren't sentient beings then we'd just go on eating, breeding and lurching from one natural disaster to the next until the Game Over panel lit up. Of course we are sentient and sensible so instead we produce more grub, eat more, breed more and preserve our kids better from the perils of infancy, and kill each other more efficiently whilst lurching etc. etc.

Today all the talk is of "biting the bullet". Well it's alright saying it, but doing it comes much tougher. We in the West are very good at criticising the world generally but not so good at listening or seeing the signs. When the little red monorchist said one wain each, everybody in China was forced to listen. Where would we be now if that policy had not been de rigeur, how many more people would now be walking around ?

We believe such social restrictions should not be enforced, or if they are they shouldn't apply to us. Well, breaking news, if we don't stop spreading like pee on a stone floor it only ever ends one way. For those of you who don't follow, this next scene involves four heavies on horses that rumble in through the clouds with their version of the Final Solution.

It seems to me that the main thing each and every one of us has to do is shed the apathy that afflicts so many (yes, alright, me too). This coming meeting in Copenhagen is yet another chance for the great and the good to realise this applies to their people and not just everyone else.

So, salve your conscience, no matter how small your contribution, do your bit, cut back where you can because when it comes down to it, you really won't be paying the bill. But you know who will.

Keep On Truckin Boys (only a Tad Slower Please)

So, we finally got to run the story this week about Sainsbury’s, known and loved by lots of housewives in the UK and their latest edict regarding their transport fleet (sorry folks, took 'em a while to decide what they wanted to say).

Now a seafaring man like me ought not to comment on the comings and goings of the Kings of the Road (well actually, I’d love to but journalistic integrity and all that) so instead we asked the people who know.

You recognise the type big horny handed blokes who eat cow pies and play with their airhorns – you got it, truckers.

Thanks to numerous comments from the haulage community, including our new mates at the Professional Drivers Association who ran a forum on this, we now have the gist of what the lorry drivers of Britain think of old Joe’s decision to govern all the fleet of Sainsbury’s big wheels down to 50 mph.

It’s not good.

Let’s face it we’ve all done it, going somewhere in a hurry, in front a truck pulls past another on the inside lane, slowly, slowly he creeps past his mate, just waiting for the flash of lights to tell him he’s 3 centimetres in front, then over to the side, flashing one indicator then the other or a quick switch of the hazards (OK, I speak fluent truckdrive).

But now that all may change. The five minutes it used to take one to pass the other will now stretch to twenty. Alright I exaggerate. But by my (crude) maths there’s 1760 yards in a mile. If one truck is doing 48 mph and the other 56 mph (current governed maximum) and the rigs are 18 metres long then, including another 18 to pull out and get back it’s going to take roughly 9 seconds to pull out, pass, and pull in. (36 metres = roughly one fiftieth of a mile, 8 mph = 1 mile in 7.5 minutes = 450 seconds divided by 50, if you worked it out and it’s wrong you have too much time on your hands, and you’re too intelligent to be reading this).

So, if Truck one is still doing 48mph but truck two is doing 50 then the whole manoeuvre takes 4 times longer or 36 seconds.

Of course that’s not the whole story. As many commented whilst overtaking you’re gunning the engine as much as possible, plus I know from personal experience some of those governors have a habit of cutting in with a sound like a busted air hose and all power simply disappears.

When an artic pulls out from another’s slipstream you start going backwards and it can be frustrating and, occasionally, unnerving.

Problem is, drivers love to whinge. Like Pete the wolf boy if you keep moaning sooner or later nobody listens. But Sainsbury’s are following the current trend. They want to be green, they want to “cut carbon”, but what’s most important they want everybody to know it.

You have to let them try and they have to evaluate the results. I just hope they do it properly and not for the sake of publicity. As many of you have said, will they count the times a guy can’t finish his round?

Your skipper has worked in a busy transport office and I’ve pointed out before that some managers “just want the job done”. They don’t want the inconvenience that comes when you won’t take a motor out that’s a little heavy or you would have to run over hours to get finished. Maybe Sainsbury’s don’t work like that and in fact I’m sure they don’t. But if things slow down and the drivers say it’s because the vehicles are governed to 50 it’s a hell of job to argue against it.

Bring on those electric trucks boys.

Anyway to illustrate that the conflict between driver and authority exists worldwide I’ve saved the best till last. This one comes from the land of boomerangs and easy sheep. It’s sound only, but, DON’T PLAY IT IN EARSHOT OF THE KIDS (in fact if you’re easily offended, don’t play it at all. Have Fun.

The Moral Imperative and Freight, Trucks, Shipping and All That

Here’s a fact that has the Captain running up the crossbones and opening up the gun ports.

I’ve touched on the subject of the gentlemen of the Press on a couple of occasions when writing this rant. And yes, I know it’s not the freight press who are the main culprits, but we’re all complicit so let’s have a few things out in the open.

When the Handy Shipping Guide started to take shape some years ago we all knew that the News was an integral part of what we wanted to achieve. Freight and shipping publications have traditionally been the most yawnsome of enterprises, written (and read) mostly by geeks who had too much time on their hands.

Yes, you wanted to know about the bits that affected you and the work you were involved in, but the rest of it? Zzzzzzz….

So we set out, bright eyed, bushy tailed young*  things, morally impervious to the corrupt influences of the commercial world.

*(Editors note. What are you on now? Young? There’s a limit to artistic licence you know)

We would be journalistic pioneers, cutting our sanctimonious swathe through the politically incorrect streets of the fourth estate.

No, what's getting my goat is the duplicity arising from personal and corporate bias plus the weighting of articles and editorials to suit the views of owners and publishers.

And that’s where my own dilemma arises. It’s easy to criticise this moral turpitude in others but somehow much less admissible when it applies to oneself. Of course freight journalism doesn’t engender the same level of general interest as, say, current affairs, but it is still vulnerable to corruption.

Although the worst of the press has, and very much still does, try to influence affairs in the world outside, politics etc. and this hardly applies to our tiny corner it is still possible to spin a story to suit a regular advertiser or omit an important piece to favour a client being courted.

Yet now we sit slumped against the wall of moral despair, heads in hands, facing the car park of grim reality, outside the Tesco’s of corruptibility, the discarded receipts of vested interest blowing aimlessly around in the empty shopping carts of decency**

** (Editors Note 2. Isn’t that a Bob Dylan lyric? He really has lost it now – That parrots demise has turned his mind.)

For those of you who have actually managed to read thus far I’d best explain what the Hell I’m on about.
It’s the press in general who have always tended to annoy me.

Mr Murdoch’s crew in particular almost always tend to make me feel queasy as I blame that gentleman for much of the appalling standards accepted today as “journalism”.
In his defence there are things which have changed for the better in the press because of his involvement, but generally I believe his influence has been detrimental, nay disastrous.

All the usual old chestnuts are still valid arguments against Rupert, News Corp. and their ilk. We now are expected to pay to watch sports that we traditionally watched free, moral standards have declined alarmingly in line with reprehensible newspaper advertising, literacy is rapidly becoming a joke.

The latest outburst from Rupe’s spawn Jamie against the BBC reminded me of a spoilt child showing off in the supermarket. Jim wants to stifle the Beeb so that he can start invoicing you for the news.
God forbid that the morally bankrupt Muppets who run the UK (or most of it) fall for that one.

The Beeb ain’t perfect, but it’s a damn sight more important than the Murdoch’s and their ilk.

Which brings me back to that mea culpa I was just starting.
Look at it this way. If you read about the recent English Ashes victory in the UK I bet the coverage was a damn sight different to that back in Oz.
Press don’t just tell stories, they include what their readers want. Unfortunately that means censorship, not in the usual sense, but a selective choice of facts and how to present them.

I wonder what the Tripoli Gleaner or its equivalent thinks about Mr al-Megrahi’s situation, not the same as the Sun I’m willing to bet.

I read the other day how Fabio Capello, Italian born manager of the England football team was undoubtedly the best thing since Ploughman’s lunches had to be made with doorstops.
As they’d just qualified for the World Cup, that could be deemed as predictable.

Thing is, the guy writing the piece has form when it comes to Mr Capello (God bless him) and his lineage. When first appointed manager, poor old Fabio, together with the F.A., had to take an incessant torrent of abuse from this particular writer who seemed to consider it immoral and unthinkable that anyone who didn’t speak English perfectly, and hail from within 200 miles of Rugby could be allowed access to the hallowed dressing room, let alone pick the team.

Now although mention was made of the author’s former hostility the low key retraction in no way compensated for the undiluted vitriol which formed the basis of his original pieces.

A case of writing what you think your audience wants to hear or read. Here’s a good example of misdirection by two sides of an argument – you don’t have to watch it all to get the drift.

And that’s where my own dilemma arises.

It’s easy to criticise this moral turpitude in others but somehow much less admissible when it applies to oneself. Of course freight journalism doesn’t engender the same level of general interest as, say, current affairs, but it is still vulnerable to corruption.

Although the worst of the press has, and very much still does, try to influence affairs in the world outside, politics etc. and this hardly applies to our tiny corner it is still possible to spin a story to suit a favourite advertiser or omit an important piece to favour a client being courted.

So I refer you back to a featured tip of the week in HSG a few weeks ago, read and enjoy, but always question – in the meantime we’ll try to play it straight – honest.

BUZZWORDS! You've had this one coming for a while.

Buzzwords. My hackles rise and my flesh creeps at the mere mention. As the headline says I've had this one brewing for some time. Anyone who knows me well realises that to send your Captain into a fast growing, lime green, shirt busting frenzy all that is needed is that all encompassing piece of junk freight, transport, logistics word "solutions".

I've said it more than once but it's still worth repeating :-  Don’t keep using this word in your advertising – toilet paper is a solution as are human bodily functions – none of them bang on about it, neither should you. Solutions are for dipping biscuits in, for washing the car, for swimming in. If you’re company is a solution it literally means you are no longer solvent.

I was reading an article by James May, the shaggy haired toff from Top Gear, last week and he was banging on (good man) about "funny" signs and practices. You know the sort of thing "you don't have to be mad etc."  or "my other car's a Bugatti Veyron"  (updated version of old joke). Well as James pointed out, the first time anyone said it, it was probably quite witty. Quite witty. Not you understand having the fortitude or longevity of a Parrot Sketch or a Salty Swedish Sea Dog.

(Excellent work by the late PS and the late, great, Alfie Bass as usual).

Well, all buzzwords like solutions fall into the same category.

Now I have to be careful here.
Handy Shipping Guide pays my wages and that money comes from our good and faithful customers, most of whom have websites. The same websites that use the "S" word over and over.

I know how hard it is to sell what you do if you are a 3PL or freight forwarder and coming up with a suitably flowery description of the services you offer whilst avoiding the clichés can be a tortuous, if not impossible venture. So my idea of banning the word from the Handy Shipping Guide website received short shrift from the rest of the Board, all of whom pointed out, quite rightly that the guy paying the piper names the tune.

So I beg you, do try, if only for an old sea dog’s sake, try to come up with a little originality.

That of course is just the proverbial tip of the mythical iceberg. I can’t believe that is the work of my stalwart fellow freight professionals. There’s the black hand of the PR guru in there somewhere.

Trouble with that theory is that in just the past few weeks I’ve had to deal with several PR blokes and blokesses and, stap me, if they’re all not some of the nicest and quickest witted people I’ve come across (please God none of them read this or they’ll all have me twisted round their corporate little fingers). So that’s another windmill I can’t have a tilt at (besides it’s not ecologically PC).

Look, there’s another one, PC, that used to be a bloke with flat feet, unashamed to wear his number proudly visible.

Fortunately some of our customers (you know who you are AT) have a similar perspective, these are some (tongue in cheek) samples of modern crapspeak…..

 reached out to me from a visual perspective….content engaged me emotionally …soup to nuts coverage …..put more skin in the game …..uptick.

What the hell is a “downtick?” Yet we were supposed to quote that last one in a story today.

For a humorous take on this subject take a look at the blogspot in Private Eye or the “Pseuds Corner” section (unfortunately these bits of the magazine don’t make it onto the website usually – buy a subscription, it’s worth it).

And please, please don’t let me begin the discussion on texting and the weird perverted Mechenglish that makes pidgin look like a higher form of language.

I’ll let the inimitable Bill Bailey close that particular subject on my behalf.

Slp wll all.