2007 was a bit of a mixed bag really, plenty of downs with very few ups, the first and most annoying of the downs was that every time I passed a fuel station the price of diesel had risen again. The up side to this was that after a phone call to my customers all but one agreed a rate increase to compensate, I do wonder if they would have given me a rate increase had I not phoned them but it pays to be on the ball I guess, as for the customer who refused I no longer do work for them but not for that reason alone.

Whilst on the subject of the price of fuel it’s very annoying to be paying full price at the pumps just to have some thieving travelling community member come around in the middle of the night and relieve my vehicle of a few hundred litres despite having locking fuel caps on, this happened on 2 separate occasions and has probably cost me around £500, the first time the police were informed and turned up within 30 minutes of it being reported but were unable to catch the culprits even though they were still there on the site, which site was this you may ask, Reading Services on the M4 westbound. The second time the vehicle was parked at a customer’s premises in Swansea but due to the lack of interest by the police in the first instance tied to the fact that you cannot claim it back from anywhere I told the driver not to waste his time reporting the theft. Time again to consider fitting anti-siphon devices but I have decided against it again. The image of a pick-axe hole in the tank and the diesel gone is too clear. Or I guess they could just knock the ‘sender’ out!

John English has been trading for 20 years, mainly international work but more recently in the UK. he runs 4 Scania artic trucks, all unmarked white, His drivers are all British drivers with approx 20 years experience