A wet summer does more than just leave the countryside waterlogged. It also affects hauliers' operator costs and in some cases their ability to operate at all. We find out the level of the problems the rain has caused. Just when hauliers thought the wet summer could not get any worse, along came the floods. And as if wet roads, worse congestion and the resulting poor fuel economy were not bad enough, hauliers in the flood-struck areas found their depots and trucks knee-deep in water.
You would need a hard heart not to sympathise with poor Edgwicks Transport, a Tewkesbury general haulier. The floods hit this 30-vehicle operator so badly that its back office was under four feet of water, its garage flooded and even when the water subsided the premises were left caked in mud and filth. If there are any blessings, says company secretary Roger Smith, it is that the trucks should be all right because the water stopped them operating but did not destroy them. This is more than you can say for the filing cabinets, which still cannot be opened because they filled with water and the paper swelled and expanded into a boggy mass.
Like the rest of Tewkesbury, the hauliers are treating the disaster pragmatically, and getting on with their job as best they can. Insurance should help their recovery, although Edgwicks is still waiting to hear what the pay-out is likely to be. There are some limited practical steps the company can take to protect itself in the future, such
as moving the filing cabinets upstairs, but essentially any real change will have to come from improved flood defences for the town as a whole. For the week that the town was effectively cut-off, the day-to-day work of the firm had to stop. Not only were the vehicles water-logged, but several of the drivers' homes were flooded and they found it very difficult to get into work. "We were literally going down the road in a boat," says Smith. One small item of relief was that one of the firm's main customers is also in Tewkesbury and was also flooded so could not operate. A crisis shared is a crisis lessened, perhaps.
And if putting a price on the cost of the wet summer is difficult for Edgwicks, it is even harder for the haulage business as a whole. Even for those whose depots were not directly flooded out, the wet weather had important consequences. Lenham Storage, the Kent-based haulier that includes multi-drop deliveries to Waitrose among its contracts, was not directly hit by the floods but did find it hard to make deliveries in the flood-hit areas. Commercial manager Steve Hall says: "We did miss two deliveries for Waitrose in the Gloucestershire area, and part of the difficulty was not so much the water as the abandoned cars."
Abandoned cars also proved a problem for Worcestershire-based Marshall's. Managing director George Simpson says: "We were able to get onto the highways and byways but we sometimes found routes blocked by cars that were stranded." Marshall's was one of the hauliers that was able to help solve the crisis by bringing water into areas where the supply was cut off. Simpson says this even involved collecting bottled water from as far afield as Carlisle to transport to Bristol on pallets.
Other hauliers affected this summer include several in Hull, where the floods hit earlier. These operators include Kingstown Haulage, whose depot was flooded for two days, although proprietor Mike Maddra was less troubled by the floods than by business generally. He says: "We were flooded for a couple of days, which obviously affected business, but the artics were all right, just out of action for a Tuesday and a Wednesday. Far worse for us has been the business outlook generally, which has been pretty sh** since Christmas." The temporary challenge of floods is clearly less important for some hauliers than the longer-term challenge of making the haulage business work in any weather. Tough commercial conditions are likely to be the main worry for hauliers long after the rains have ceased.
Flooding was a disaster for many hauliers, but for some it provided extra work. Geoff Dossetter, the Freight Transport Association's (FTA) director of external affairs, says during the worst of the flooding in Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, the FTA was contacted by the Department for Transport to help identify hauliers with tankers able to carry fresh water, as well as those with cranes that could run bowsers into local sites. Dossetter says: "This was the DfT acting on behalf of Severn Trent Water and there were echoes of 2002 when we had a similar government request during the foot and mouth crisis, when we were asked about tipper operators who could ferry carcasses from farms to incinerators."
If the floods provided the most dramatic example of the effects of the wet weather last month, the high level of rains throughout the summer was a constant drain on hauliers' operating costs. Wet roads mean higher fuel consumption and more congestion, which also increases fuel use and stops hauliers from working as efficiently as they otherwise could. Fuel consumption specialist Michael Coyle says high winds, water on the roads and slower travelling due to traffic held up by the weather will all have increased the amount of fuel hauliers use. He adds: "Slow-moving traffic also causes increased fuel consumption because trucks use more fuel when they are in lower gears." Coyle adds that even standing in traffic with the engine on is a potential fuel-waster for trucks, with a 12-litre engine using two litres of fuel an hour just to tick over.
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