Crushed on the road to oil armageddon: UK’s road haulage industry close to meltdown

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.sundayherald.com/business/businessnews/display.var.2192910.0.crushed_on_the_road_to_oil_armageddon.php

Cushed on the road to oil armageddon

Record oil prices have pushed the UK’s road haulage industry close to meltdown, with unions warning that tax relief is all that can save many smaller companies

Selwyn Parker reports

ANOTHER WEEK, another set of dire omens and fears for the UK haulage industry. Last week it was the turn of Unite, Britain's largest trade union to warn that unless the government implements an essential users' rebate on diesel tax, small companies will go bust and employees will lose out on wages.

With the industry reeling over the price of diesel and the massive amount of tax commercial users have to pay, Ron Webb, Unite's national secretary for road transport, said: "The government needs to listen to the trade associations. Unless they introduce a method of returning some of the tax to road haulage companies they will simply not be able to continue to operate. Not only will small companies go bust but larger companies are informing us across the bargaining table that unless they see a change soon it will mean lower wages for employees."

Webb pointed out that the UK road haulage companies' problems are exacerbated by the fact that European haulage firms fill up their trucks abroad for cheaper rates and are increasingly coming across to the UK and working British routes.
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"Unless the government acts soon we could see a major road haulage protest. Unite simply will not allow our members' wages to be cut without a robust response," he said.

...

[arendt]

1. WTF? Higher prices means lower wages?

"...larger companies are informing us across the bargaining table that unless they see a change soon it will mean lower wages for employees."

Excuse me, but why are they going to take this out on the workers? Why don't they just pass it along? Its not like their competitors are hurting any less?

When did it become "obvious" that when inflation strikes, its time to cut workers' wages?

arendt

[Dead_Parrot]

5. The longer they can hold out...

...the more they'll pick up from companies that can't. So the small compainies with nothing in the bank will go under, followed by the mid-range, then a couple of the large ones...

Then the remainder will agree to pass the costs (probably over a brandy after a rather nice meal) and all hell will break loose.

[arendt]

8. I forgot what a bunch of cynical ghouls the ruling class are. Thanks for reminding me. n/t

[TheMadMonk]

2. Put the freight back on the rails.

With containers and modern cargo transfer equipment, there is no reason why the vast majority of freight couldn't be shipped by rail. With a hydraulic loader/unloader in each town to keep turnaround time to a minimum.

It could even be done with minor modifications to old style boxcars. A good deal of fuel/power loss in rail is in accelerating a loaded train up to speed. So don't do it. Decouple the last car(s) on the fly and divert it onto a siding/spur (side track) at each town without slowing the rest of the train (and subsequently speeding it up again).

Stop/start could then be restricted to movement of empty, or nearly empty (and thus lighter) cars back to the main hub. Or even perhaps by keeping the main train on the move while a fast shunter followed behind, adding return cars to the rear of the train on the move.

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. I'm all for it

How long will it take you to put the infrastructure in place?

[TheMadMonk]

4. Dunno. Depends on how much got ripped out.

Where the main lines still exist, I suspect it could be done in a few years, or less depending on how much manpower got thrown at the problem. Actual (re)construction of a small spur in every town (or at least semi-major centre, would take a month or two. Side loaders are all but off the shelf. Refitting cars for on the fly decoupling/coupling no more than 12 months to develop, and another year to put into mass production.

The biggest hurdle would be completely separating the road network (and the idiots who drive into trains) from the rail.

[OKIsItJustMe]

6. Rails shining through

My street still has shiny steel rails that reappear as the pavement becomes worn (left over from streetcars of another era.) Buses still follow those old streetcar routes, like ghosts.

By the same token, rails were built to follow the trade routes established by the canals.

Crossings don't bother me much. We know how to make them safe for just about everybody aside from impatient idiots who don't want to wait for slow moving trains.

The rails of my childhood were diminished, but remain in tracery form. However, it would require a tremendous amount of work to bring them back up to capacity, at a time when we're having trouble maintaining our roads.

Still, I think maybe you underestimate just how much freight does travel by train.

http://nationalatlas.gov/articles/transportation/a_freightrr.html

...

Freight railroads are critical to the economic well-being and global competitiveness of the United States. They move 42 percent of our nation's freight (measured in ton-miles) - everything from lumber to vegetables, coal to orange juice, grain to automobiles, and chemicals to scrap iron - and connect businesses with each other across the country and with markets overseas. They also contribute billions of dollars each year to the economy through investments, wages, purchases, and taxes.

...

[TheMadMonk]

7. I just realised something.

As the outbound train leaves cars behind and gets lighter fuel expenditure drops, beyond even the savings achieved by not repeatedly restarting the train.

In fact. The most efficient goal would be a network of interconnected loops around which the locomotives remained in continuous motion, stopping only for maintenance. Electric or possibly even nuclear power for remote areas would be the obvious choices. The incorporation of strategically located bi-direct loops would simplify scheduling enormously.

Beyond that, on an electrified network, discard the notions of locomotive and shunter all together. Each car is individually powered. A control car manages the cars most closely adjacent in front of or behind, even if they separate to allow the insertion of cars into the middle of a moving train. With sufficient functional autonomy, even physical couplings become redundant.

The ideal goal being to accelerate from stationary, each goods car only once and to bring it to a halt only at its final destination.

Yes, it would mean construction or reconstruction of a great deal of infrastructure, but it's coming, whether we like it or not, unless we are willing to put nuclear power plants on public roads, or alternately divert huge swathes of agricultural land to bio-fuel production. The fuel prices that started this discussion might be geopolitically influenced at the moment, but peak oil makes them inevitable, regardless.

Tax/excise breaks, such as those called for in the article quoted in the OP, provide only temporary relief and protection for the the threatened industries, pass the increasing cost onto members of the public one way or another no matter what. A comprehensive long term solution must be found. Targeted protection is no such solution.