Guide to freight transportation and logistics. Freight shipping and cargo logistics via all modes of transport including forwarding, cargo, freight, trucking, air freight, cargo shipping, express freight, freight forwarders, intermodal, container companies, third party logistics providers, maritime, moving, storage, railroads, trucking, customs house brokers, steamship companies, transportation brokers, freight clearinghouses, leasing and capital equipment financing, shipment tracking, shipment tracing, shipment pricing
The UK haulage industry has been left fuming by Home Office plans to increase fines for hauliers caught carrying illegal migrants into Britain. The new rule has been included as part of Home Secretary, Priti Patel’s, ‘New Plan for UK Immigration’. The current fine for haulage firms whose truckers are caught carrying illegal immigrants is £2,000.
The industry has warned that the new fine, which will apply regardless of whether drivers comply with security measures and schemes, will make the driver shortage crisis even worse. The draft of the New Plan for UK Immigration is said to contain the new penalty as a way of ‘providing enough incentive to comply with the requirements of the schemes’.
EU truck exodus leaves UK truck drivers in dire need
The sector has warned that the exodus of EU truck drivers from the UK, Brexit has left the British transport and logistics industry suffering a severe shortage of workers and a crisis for industry and retail shipments.
Industry associations and major UK commodity companies said that unless urgent measures are taken to address the shortcomings, the tensions that can be seen in the industry will be apparent to the public by the end of the summer.
While the sector has suffered from a chronic shortage of drivers in recent decades, these have worsened Brexi An end to EU recruitment, a delay in driving tests caused by Covid-19 and autonomous tax reforms that have increased the exit of EU drivers.
Click the thumbs up >Telematics monitoring and targeted driver solutions help Paul Ayris to halve incident rates and damage costs over 12 months.
Vehicles are in Paul Ayris’s blood. His father owned HGVs, so, since a young age, he has been around the yard environment.
It was no surprise, then, when he entered the haulage sector, working for several businesses before setting up his own company.
“When it’s your money, that really focuses your mind on cost savings,” Ayris says. It was the ideal foundation for a career in fleet management.
The move from haulage to fleet began with a four-month contract managing a fleet of 120 vans for LiveWest. As the housing association entered a growth phase, bringing many outsourced projects in-house, Ayris was asked to be part of the journey.