Events this week have taken over my blog again and you will be delighted to hear that I’am not talking about The Lisbon Treaty! What I’am talking about is the incredible rise in Fuel costs over the last week indeed is has got so serious that the Irish Road Haulage Association had a crises meeting last night and their President has warned that many hauliers will go out of business within a month if some relief is not given and having been involved closely with haulage in a past life and don’t doubt him for a minute.
So, if are reading this in Ireland you might be wondering what of the bus and coach operators? Do they not use diesel? Or are their profit margins so huge that they can absorb such outrageous increases? These would all be reasonable questions as the outcry from our industry has been, well, non existent!
Well the answer is we all use diesel and as far as I can see margins are tiny if indeed many are making a profit so why are we so quiet?
The only answer I can give to this is that we do not have a representative trade body, we have the Coach Tourism Council that speak very eloquently for their members on many matters but, unfortunately do not speak for companies like us who do not match criteria to become a member (age of vehicles, number of staff etc). There are some other bodies such as FOTA and PAMBO but to be honest they seem to have many other agendas (which they do follow very well).
So whats the answer if we want our voice to be heard? The only answer I can think of is to try to form a trade association that leaves behind issues of hierarchy and mistrust of members motives and gets stuck into the big and burning issues that threaten the very existence of our industry and fight some of the other obstacles to profitable operation that exist for everyone in our industry – what do you think?
Both the hauliers and fisherman have made the news this week and compliments to both for putting their point across, we really do need to act.
You might be wondering how this all affects us personally, well I have to say that fortunately because of prudent fleet replacement and refurbishment we are able to weather the storm better than if we had huge finance payments to meet every month but nonetheless our margins are squeezed particularly when combined with the global downturn in business.
So how can you help this poor coach operator? Here is a good way, book one of our tours instead of going with one of the multi national large groups and let our lean green touring machine sock it to them and prove you don’t need 20 new buses to become a major player in the business!
Music – The Stone Roses – Best of – another revisit really but great to here some fantastic ravey, rocky music that become their trademark, still cant decide if Fools Gold or I’am the Resurrection is my favourite roses track!
Books – No change from last week (been very busy!)
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