Eddie Stobart.

[Tannedbaldhead]

Looking grim

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49445495

Edited by Tannedbaldhead on Friday 23 August 09:32

[fuzzyyo]

The next Patisserie Valerie?

[Digga]

A sad decline. A once justifiably proud firm, now a parody. The drivers are now widely ridiculed.

I can tell you when it all started to go wrong - when Stobart himself was quoted in the press spouting the latest management buzz words "sell and lease back".

[red_slr]

I have no sympathy.
I was told, don't know how true it is, that each one of their trucks makes them less than £50 a day.
The haulage / logistics industry has been struggling for 2-3 years and driving prices down and down is only going to result in one thing.
For some reason so many of the big firms just don't see the problem with this. Hopefully this will be a wake up call.

[brickwall]

Woodford the largest shareholder. Great.

[Mammasaid]

Just Google Andrew Tinkler

[citizensm1th]

Good, they have always struck me y as being quite to good to be true.

What's the betting tesco bails them out

[banjowilly]

You won't find many Stobart fans in the industry but...

I wouldn't get over excited by this. They have a business forever & this isn't going to kill it, not by a long, long chalk.

[pavarotti1980]

Surely the Stobart Group is big enough to absorb this? Air and Rail freight business too.

Unless of course they are struggling

[red_slr]

I would think so but I could see them cutting a lot of dead wood from the trees.

In addition the cost to run freight operations is eye watering - they have some seriously large distribution units and these will be in a chicken and egg situation..

[Countdown]

Mammasaid said:

Just Google Andrew Tinkler

So was Tinkler right?

[227bhp]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Lovely anecdote i'm sure, but why did he say that?

[Digga]

227bhp said:

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Lovely anecdote I'm sure, but why did he say that?

It's not the greatest of roads for HGVs, especially in winter weather, or in finer weather when it is chock full of cyclists.

I can imagine there are a good many operational risks to that route, plus there may also be tacit agreements in place with hauliers.

[Shakermaker]

227bhp said:

Lovely anecdote i'm sure, but why did he say that?

Internal company policy maybe?

[RTB]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

[red_slr]

They will be "banned" because the average road speed over the course of x100s of runs will be higher on the other M route. The fuel burn will be higher. The accident rate over that route will also probably be higher. Once everything is factored in its faster, safer and cheaper to take the longer route.

Loads have to get to their destination at exact times and whilst you may have had a good run they have probably been burned too many times on the rural route. The last thing they want is a driver running out of hours in the middle of nowhere.

[Digga]

O/T, the Cat & Fiddle up from Macc used to be a great road before the average speed cameras and fad for wearing lyrca and pretending you are in the Tour de France.

I can remember hooning toward a hairpin in my first TVR Griffith (I'd be about 25) and, exiting the corner in the opposite direction, at full steam, was another TVR, a 400SE IIRC. Happy days.

[banjowilly]

In my early days, as the lowest form of haulage life I.e. a traffic clerk, the biggest sinking feeling always came from agency drivers. Lots of very good ones to be clear but also plenty who could not give a fig. We always looked at them as a reassuringly expensive way to get your trucks & trailers smashed up.

[vonuber]

Cat and fiddle isn't exactly hgv friendly is it.

[Digga]

banjowilly said:

In my early days, as the lowest form of haulage life I.e. a traffic clerk, the biggest sinking feeling always came from agency drivers. Lots of very good ones to be clear but also plenty who could not give a fig. We always looked at them as a reassuringly expensive way to get your trucks & trailers smashed up.

Or loose freight/get lost/mysteriously run out of hours.