These last few weeks have been quite an eye opener for me.

Whereas I used to have a fairly neutral view of big business……well, if anything I would have had a mildly positive view of the community benefits of industry, what with the job opportunities created and the trickle down factor resulting in benefits to the local community…the shopkeepers, tradesmen etc…..I now find myself thinking that Big Business acts as a parasite on the community, sucking the very lifeblood out of the community it is supposedly enriching. What, I hear you asking, has brought this change of thinking about?

For the best part of 20 years, I was self employed, providing a window cleaning service to upwards of 400 regular domestic customers and small businesses.

And what an interesting client base I had!! However, two serious falls. .the most recent in April 2004 , led to my wife banning me forever from ladder work……so now I can only clean windows where the use of a ladder is not required…and there aren’t that many bungalow owners who need a window cleaner! They probably bought their bungalow to save on window cleaning costs! So I have returned, temporarily, I hope ,to HGV driving(44 ton articulated lorries)……and quickly realised why I had left that honourable profession 20 years ago!! Which brings me back to my opening remarks above…….

The agency I work with places me with different local companies according to their particular needs. In the main, my assignments have been with companies providing a collection and / or delivery service into RDCs……..these Regional Distribution Centres( usually owned by major supermarket chains) are strategically placed throughout the UK so that suppliers can bring their goods in, and the supermarkets can, via their own dedicated transport, get the goods to their stores according to their specific timetables and needs. The RDCs I have “serviced” tend to be placed close to the motorway networks, and can cover acres of space. They thus can tailor the layout of the site to suit their operation, but most tend to follow a fairly common pattern, layout – wise.

Deliveries come into these RDCs “just in time”, and this brings me to the eye opening point. The RDC is not intended to be a storage facility. When the goods have been received and checked, they are regrouped into loads for specific stores and sent out on their way. When arriving at the designated store the goods are quickly unloaded and in next to no time the shelves are filled. The individual stores do not have “storage capacity” but an unloading area which will probably be equivalent to a couple of loads, at most, of recently arrived stock. This, we are likely to be told, is good business practice. After all, why have “dead space” on premium rated sites?

All available space must be revenue earning……..and that applies to RDCs and the individual stores.

What is the effect of this policy? More importantly, who pays for it?

The effect is that the road network is a warehouse. You have only to travel the motorway network to see the effects………hundreds of HGVs criss crossing the country restocking the stores. The cost to the system is enormous…….and not just to the road surface and other necessary ancillary provisions. Who pays for the effect of diesel fumes? Increasing congestion? Stress? Family breakdown?You and I do, that’s who.

For while we may pay a “competitive “ (direct) price in the shop/retail outlet of our choice, the indirect cost is incalculable…………..and it comes out of our taxes. It will not be a cost borne by Big Business…..after all, the most important consideration for Business is not the end – user, or the staff, but the shareholder, and that usually means institutional investors……Big Business. So anything that can be done to limit costs, keep margins up, and therefore profits up has to be pursued, no matter what long term effects on the local community it supposedly serves.

Long gone are the days when large companies took their social responsibilities seriously……….but that’s another story.

There are many occupations which seem susceptible to exploitation, and where such exploitation leads to consequences beyond the job or work itself, leading on to perhaps greater and more personally damaging effects.

I have worked in transport and distribution over the years….I cut my teeth, as it were, in the local office of a farming co-operative, including in my work the arranging of the routing of the ten lorries which regularly serviced the farming community in the near district . I was only recently left school, so to come into contact with the rural branch of the trucking fraternity…and you must be careful that you don’t transpose the initial letters of those two words…!!..was quite a revelation.

Here was a boy trying to deal with men…and some pretty obnoxious ones at that. And they always seemed to be complaining. Either the weather wasn’t right, or they needed to have all their “drops” on the back end of the lorry…or something similar.

In the 1980s I was a driver myself and I saw first hand the pressures attached to making deliveries into corner shops and the like…either the shopkeeper hadn’t ordered the goods, or the price on the invoice didn’t match the price he remembered the salesman quoting him…or the goods were damaged, or past their sell by date……or it was near closing time, or lunch time, and there wasn’t time to unload…..or the boss wasn’t in, so payment for the goods (usually COD) would not be possible…..and so on. It was usually best, in the interests of sanity and keeping the job moving, that you develop your own strategy for dealing with these various situations. If you could treat the responsible person at the delivery point as a friend, then you might be able to mitigate against the worst of these situations. In the end, though, the unrelenting nature of the daily grind…usually 12 hour days….made me look in a different direction for paid employment.

Just recently I returned to HGV1 driving. I am employed by an agency, which places me with different local companies, according to their needs. The working hours in transport are decidedly anti-family and anti-social, although I am able, to some extent, to maintain some sort of control over my working hours, given my family and other commitments.

Some companies operate a “four days on – four days off” routine. This sounds fine in itself, but regular weekends for a family man , when his children are at home and not at school, become something of a rarity. And those days when he is working…(and these are not 9 till 5 working days) he would be very fortunate to see his children at all. To illustrate……..just recently I started a shift at 0900…the load was going to Wakefield…arrival time 1330….departure time…1530. Arrival time at Leeming, (a further 60 miles north)..1700. Departure time..1730. Arrival time back at base..2225. After refuelling and debriefing ..finish time 2245. Grand total 13 ¾ hours. And that didn’t include the getting to and from work……a total of nearly 15 hours. And that would be typical for many drivers.

You may think that the tachograph installed in HGVs would prevent infractions of the law…….which it undoubtedly does….but there have been cases of drivers(with/without company knowledge/consent) who have falsified documents and/ or tampered with the tachograph device in the mistaken belief that this may give them some advantage…quite what I cannot perceive, although I suppose speeding would not be detectable…well, not before speed cameras could actually identify the vehicle type passing under their constant gaze.

It would seem that some employers think that their drivers actually want to work incredibly long hours, given recent job advertisements I have observed in the local press. One such advertisement trumpeted in bold type that the top drivers for this particular company were earning £600 per week. In the not so bold, and smaller type, this wage was earned over 60 hours. What does this tell you? That the driver had probably worked a total of 5 days at 12 hours maximun…which would mean the best part of 13 hours daily, given the statutory break periods necessary. So, leaving home at say 0600 would mean his not returning until almost 2000..almost time to go to bed.

See what I mean? And you can be sure that the £600 mentioned was before deductions.

How long will it be before government and large companies undergo a sea change in their outlook to transport and distribution? The average age of truckdrivers would seem to be in the upper 40s. Where will all the new drivers come from?

True, there is a certain kudos in driving nearly new vehicles etc, but the reality of the long working day would be enough to make anyone think twice before he takes up this profession. He who takes up this occupation is either unmarried/divorced and has no other interests / outside commitments….or he just wants to be exploited.