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News Release from: Freight Transport Association | Subject: Geoff Dossetter On The Role Of The Lorry
Edited by the Buildingtalk Editorial
Team on 02 February 2004
If You've Got It Then It Came On A
Lorry!
Geoff Dossetter of the Freight Transport Association explains why we cannot live without the lorry.
Geoff Dossetter of the Freight Transport Association explains why we cannot live without the lorry The lorry is not the most popular vehicle on the UK's overcrowded roads network
This article was originally published on Buildingtalk on 9 Dec 2003 at 8.00am (UK)
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In relation to the cars that most of us drive it's big and its requirements on the shared roadspace are different.
It does not accelerate as quickly as a car.
It needs more space to turn.
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It takes up space if it needs to park at the roadside.
Whether it is on the motorway or in town, most car drivers regard the lorry as a bit of a pain.
And yet without the lorry we simply could not enjoy the lifestyle and ready availability of goods and services, pretty well everywhere, when we want them.
Everybody wants what's on board the lorry.
Not everybody wants to see the lorry on the road.
The operation of the lorry in the twenty-first century is a remarkable success story and an enormous credit to the last 50 years of progress by the transport and logistics industry and by all of the smart and innovative managers, drivers and technicians who have been responsible for that development.
In the early 1950s there were some 450,000 goods vehicles and just two million cars.
As the post-war economy grew then so did the vehicle fleets.
By 1967 the number of goods vehicles had peaked at just below 600,000 and the number of cars gone to 8.8 million.
But today we have just 425,000 goods vehicles - but we also have 26 million cars! So in 50 years the ratio has gone from just over four cars for every lorry to over 50 cars for every lorry! Which vehicle do you think is responsible for the ever growing congestion we see - the lorry or the car? I'm here to tell you it's the car.
Of course the size and operation of that lorry fleet has changed enormously over these 50 years.
We now have bigger vehicles, and better operated.
A maximum weight 44 tonne articulated lorry might do 60 or 70,000 miles in a year and is safer, quieter, less polluting and more fuel efficient than its predecessors.
And it operates at something like 85 per cent full for all of that mileage.
Long gone are the days when a lorry set out full and came back empty.
The development of sophisticated IT planning means that a lorry goes out full, drops its load, moves on close by to pick up something else, and so on.
Empty running lorries are a painful expense for their owners and operators and are to be avoided as a dead loss.
In a very competitive economy, full and efficient running is a key factor.
And, of course, efficient and economic transport operations play a vital role in the economy of every household in the UK.
Something around ten to fifteen per cent of the cost of food and drink is made up of transport and distribution costs.
Just work out how much that means within your weekly grocery bill.
So complaints from the transport industry about the high cost of fuel duty, the even higher cost of roads congestion, and the restrictions which we put on the times and places where lorries can go, impact on all of us.
Development of smart lorry operations has provided us with the availability of a range and quantity of goods at locations right across the country.
Your local supermarket - wherever it is in the UK - will provide a choice of products from all over the world.
And clever and efficient logistics and lorry operations have brought employment opportunities to places where they didn't exist previously.
If you've got it then it's been on a lorry - for your benefit.
But people don't like lorries and, quite wrongly, blame goods vehicles for causing roads congestion.
The reality is that successive governments have failed to provide us with a transport infrastructure anything like up to the standard we should expect from the fourth largest economy in the world.
So we have clogged up roads which causes problems for all of us, whether car drivers or lorry operators.
Somehow the super smart transport industry has managed to get better and better despite all of the problems of congestion.
But it's not easy - cars and trucks share the same congestion.
So the next time you get cheesed off with the lorry in front, then swallow hard and try to be tolerant.
He's actually working for you.
And remember, if you've got it then it came on a lorry.
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