Long has the roadtrain been dismissed by the authorities as dangerous yet government is willing to pay for a trial of 10 trucks to platoon up and down the M6 with just one driver. When the driverless Google Car crashed into a bus there was a collective sigh among those who believe in the natural order of things. The car was rolling at 2mph and the bus at 15mph. No one was injured. Google reported that “its car was trying to get around some sandbags on a street when its left front struck the right side of the bus”. A test driver in the car, who under state law must be in the front seat to grab the wheel when needed, thought the bus would yield and did not have control when the collision happened, according to Google’s report (source: The Guardian). The technology is in its infancy and the ‘driverless’ concept will eventually become a way of life once insurance companies have the confidence to provide cover. Now it’s us, the Brits, who will be able to experience the driverless vehicle and all of its foibles. In this case it’ll be a truck or trucks, following news that Chancellor George Osborne is expected to confirm the trial in in his forthcoming Budget. The Department for Transport said the UK would ‘lead the way’ in testing driverless ‘HGV platoons’ using a technology that will ‘speed up’ deliveries, ‘cut congestion’ and use ‘less fuel’. Bold but ambiguous series of statements considering we don’t build any trucks and the Germans have already been doing this for a while, and that time and fuel is not the aim but safety. Platooning is a line of vehicle shadowing the lead vehicle, and it will take place on the M6 in Cumbria later in 2016, according to The Times, on a quiet stretch of the motorway with up to 10 computer-controlled lorries being driven metres apart from each other. It said the chancellor was preparing to fund the trials. There is so much wrong with this it beggars belief. It is misguided and doomed to fail as the concept does not represent the movement of freight on Britain’s roads. Unlike Europe trucks in the UK don’t run en masse from one part of the continent/country to another; here in Blighty deliveries are more individual and bespoke. The roads are more congested, with few sections not clogged with junctions and intersections. It is unlikely any operator will need to run this amount of trucks between two fixed places often enough for it to pay for the technology. Few warehouses can cope with 10 deliveries in one go, that is why deliveries have time slots. If a haulier did trunk with volume they’d look to rail. It would mean waiting for all the loads to be ready and loaded onto each vehicle in the platoon, losing valuable time, and for a driver to position all the trucks in line. Even finding enough space to line them up, for traffic lights to be set up so 10 trucks could go through at once, roundabouts, roundabouts with traffic lights, junctions... Will it require an escort to surmount these obstacles? What if ‘truck two’ is at 30 tonnes GVW and ‘truck three’ at 44 tonnes GVW, will they maintain the gap climbing Shap or running up and over Beattock on the M74? Unlikely. Would you then have to spread the loads evenly? Time consuming. This is only the tip of the logistic iceberg. They will use more fuel with all the buggering around to set it up, the convoy will be slower, and the trucks will be driven manually over the final mile to their destination adding to time and effort. At that point you’ll still need a driver for each vehicle. You’d be better off with an Aussie-style roadtrain. Oh, hang on, that idea is continually dismissed by Government even though it would be significantly easier, cheaper and more practical to devise and run. If there is an operator out there who do take 10 trucks from A-to-B regularly enough and far enough to use this technology then I’ll take off my hat and apologise. But I think not. This is surely too unbelievable and farcical to be put into practice. But the DfT and Chancellor have form on this; look at the farcical ‘longer-trailer trial’ over 10 years, yes, 10 years; advocating a Toll Road around Birmingham that has never made any money; removing funding for the newly created Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency; and the duty on fuel. I, for one, am not against technology. Individual trucks, on certain stretches of the motorway network should be able to switch to ‘auto-pilot’ to allow the driver to relax, and there are off-road environments where it would be beneficial to have ‘remote-control’ of a truck. These are step-by-step technologies that can be introduced and that operators could employ successfully.
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The biggest risk to a family business is nepotism as the new generation nearly always fail to truly understand the business ethos set up by their elders. For a few years I drove the byways of a rural county in a tipper delivering aggregate and collecting sand, mud or recycled bricks to bring back to the quarry. It was a classic Mineral Merchant Father and Son Limited business steeped in social history.
The Old Man was a legend. Fiery, considerate, aloof, engaging…you never knew what mood he was going to be in on a morning when you collected the keys for the truck. He’d be there, flask on side, issuing last minute orders for collections, everything written down on scraps of paper and given, personally, to the driver. Woe betide any driver that lost a scrap of paper with the details on; customer, load, and destination. I did. Once. After that I took my own note book and wrote everything down a second time so if one flew out the window I wouldn’t have to phone in from the roadside and get an earful. A second earful awaited your return. The Old Man built everything up from a patch of land he’d bought for tuppence ha’penny way back when; the quarries (one owned and others leased off the local Duchy), the fleet and the business. You worked all day, the pay was bang average, if you did what was asked then job security was as long as you wanted it, if you showed an independent streak or did something wrong you were gone. He knew your parents, relations, birthday, where you lived, who you married and most likely a few others things he kept on file in case anyone put a foot wrong. He was feared and respected in equal measure. I enjoyed the work and only moved on when my marriage hits the rocks. The Old Man referred to his eldest son as ‘No1’. He also had No2, No3 and Sheila. Little was known about No2 or No3. They most likely went to boarding school then university and forged a life independent of the quarry that had paid for a privileged education. Sheila briefly worked in the office before being whisked off her feet by some polo-playing aristocrat. Or at least that was what was said. Gradually No1 Son was brought into the fold. It became clear that No1 Son had no real aptitude; however, he liked the money. It’s possible that his arrival saw his regular pocket money for toys was replaced by a wage, because after a patchy start he started attending daily working a nine-to-four. While the Old Man was there at 5.30am opening the gates and issues orders, No1 Son arrived at nine, strode into the office and was not seen again until four when he drove around several of the quarries then hightailed it home (or somewhere else more important). Brief spells in the transport office, on the weighbridge, the processing plant, sales office, administration and finally with the accountant were deemed enough to forge his ‘understanding’ of the business. I left just before the Old Man was taken ill and a thirty-something No1 Son took up the reigns of the carriage. Occasional calls from Big Dave, most companies employ a Big Dave, kept me up to speed with the changing times at Father & Son Limited. The Old Man was put out to grass by the medics even though he tried to retain control, No1 Son was good enough to let him have an office at the quarry and from there the Old man would occasionally roam the premises dispensing advice. In the meantime, No1 Son used his brief time with the accountant to put forward ideas that would drive down operational costs while pushing up efficiencies. In short, wages stagnated and the price for stone went up. I know this because a local one-man band, my soon to be ex-father-in-law with a tired old six-wheeler hauled stone for the Old Man as a subbie for years as well as hauling out stone for his own jobs, received two letters. The first told him that due to increased costs of blasting the rocks from the quarry face and processing them, stiff competition from other quarries in the local area and falling demand, the haulage rates for subbies were being frozen. A second letter arrived telling him that due to increased costs of blasting the rocks from the quarry face and processing them, two-fold upturn in demand for the quarry’s goods and rising haulage rates, the price of aggregate would be going up four percent. Both letters were signed by No1 Son. My soon to be ex-father-in-law took his business elsewhere for the remaining few years he operated. Not that it made any difference; Father & Son Limited flourished under No1 Son. Turnover, both in terms of money and workforce, went up and the lavish cars he drove were frequently replaced as new models of Range Rover broke cover. When the Old Man passed away, the funeral was mobbed by many former employees. No1 Son read a eulogy that didn’t really relate the Old Man we’d known. No one was invited to the wake at the family estate. Instead we went to celebrate the life of the Old Man at the village pub; we bought our own drinks and food and swapped well-known stories long into the night. One wonders if No1 Son’s funeral will be so fondly remembered. |
AuthorAging proletariat with face, teeth and body to prove it. Archives
August 2021
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