Probably the first of many.

[Donny Dave]

One of South Yorkshire's biggest haulage companies has gone bust with the loss of 180 jobs.

A spokeswoman for E Pawson and Sons confirmed that the family-run company had gone into administration.

Director Rachel Slade said: "We are absolutely devastated at the moment and feel for all the people who have been affected by what has happened."

Based at Braithwell, near Rotherham, the firm also has depots in Normanton and Wakefield in West Yorkshire.

It ceased trading on Friday and the 180-strong workforce were made redundant with immediate effect.

Mrs Slade blamed the spiralling price of fuel and competition from major logistics companies for the decision to close.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/south_yorkshire/7344373.stm

This is thanks to the governments policy of tax everything as much as possible, then tax it again ....

Sadly, this looks to be only the tip of the iceberg as many logistic companies are struggling to make ends meet, and other companies are looking to reduce their fleets and operations. Currently, diesel is £1.18 a litre here, of which the government takes about 80% in fuel duty and VAT. (Tax and tax again remember.)

 

[yorkie]

But they can't all go bust! There will still be a fairly high demand to transport things, and the demand still has to be met, for the time being at least until we change where things are produced....

But, we have to be honest here, and say that too much is being transported.

We import too many goods, and transport too many things around. Too many jobs have gone elsewhere because it is "not viable" to manufacture things here.

I think that, with the way fuel costs are going, we are going to see long-term more 'primary sector' jobs returning to this country as it will become economic to produce things here. This can only be a good thing long term, but it may not be easy short term...

 

[Metroland]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/south_yorkshire/7344373.stm

This is thanks to the governments policy of tax everything as much as possible, then tax it again ....

Sadly, this looks to be only the tip of the iceberg as many logistic companies are struggling to make ends meet, and other companies are looking to reduce their fleets and operations. Currently, diesel is £1.18 a litre here, of which the government takes about 80% in fuel duty and VAT. (Tax and tax again remember.)

A popular idea, but wrong in fact. Fuel duty is about 62% of the cost at the pump, what has been going up is the worldwide price of oil, currently up around $110 a barrel.

All countries have been affected, they have had trucker protests in the US. In less well off countries there are fuel riots and food riots. So, no we can't blame the Labour Government for this one.

There has also been heavy price increases in other commodities, driven by the booming economies of India and China.

You'll note food is going up heavily, as a result of the increase in the price of oil and the rush to biofuels, as well as flooding and poor harvests and increased demand for meat in China and India.

Some of us have been talking about this emerging worldwide crisis for at least 2 years, and the majority of it has fallen on deaf ears. It saddens me to say, that everything we said would come true, is coming true.

However, its good news for rail and water, and the other less carbon intensive forms of transport, but partial or full collapse of the airline and road haulage industry is somewhat inevitable. The cutting of tax will be nothing more than a short term fix, indeed what we need is demand reduction.

How it affects the rest of us will be down to emerging technologies and transferring goods to alternative modes: Especially electrified rail. Which is why I'm a passionate supporter of this.

Here's a selection of articles surrounding these issues from the last few days, and anyone that reads a good newspaper will probably be well aware of much of this forthcoming worldwide environmental, energy and financial crisis.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7344892.stm

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/diesels-turn-under-the-pump/2008/04/12/1207856910198.html

http://capital.trendaz.com/index.shtml?show=news&newsid=1174695&lang=EN

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...fuels-is-driving-up-price-of-food-808138.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/indias-struggle-to-feed-a-billion-people-808137.html

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/04/let-them-eat-ethanol/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/04/11/cnimf111.xml

 

[Mojo]

Is there also the chance that they are being undercut by outfits from Eastern Europe? I remember watching Traffic Cops or something similar recently where they impounded numerous vehicles for exceeding the legal limit of hours. There was one guy who even approached the police asking for his vehicle to be impounded as he had exceeded drivers' hours but his company wouldn't let him have a break!

The police were saying that if it were a UK firm they could issue penalty notices and take the operator to court, but at present there are minimal powers for vehicles registered overseas.

 

[Donny Dave]

Metroland, sadly, all of the contracts that Pawson's had cannot move to rail, as it is wagon load at best. The same is true for many transport companies. How easy would it be to load a container and put it on the railway, take it from Rotherham to Coventry (for example), remove 4 pallets, then to Birmingham and deleiver the rest, then load at Stafford and Shrewsbury.

It's only the big logistic companies that can consider a trainload, and even these are limited. It all depends on what's needed where.

B&Q could consider a container service from Immingham and Felixstowe to their depot at Worksop, but there isn't enough demand, as their like for like sales are down for the 3rd year running.

 

[Metroland]

I don't make myself very popular telling people this stuff, but I think they ought to know, its surprising how many don't. The information is widely available in good newspapers, on financial websites and so on and is no secret.

There's no silver bullet, and of course I meant more rail freight in general, not necessarily for that flow. All I know is business as usual has now finished, whether we like it or not.

What a lot of people don't realise is that at a 7% growth in usage (we're seeing much higher than that in Asia) it means in the next 10 years, humanity uses the same amount of resources as it did in ALL of it's history.

Oil production has been flat for a number of years (you can check these figures from the IEA or their US counterpart http://www.eia.doe.gov/aer/txt/ptb1105.html ) and demand keeps on surging, we'll have to come up with alternatives or re-engineer our economy. Either way, a tax cut would only be a short term measure and only increase demand and therefore prices. The other option is rationing as they did in the 50s/70s.

According to this morning's Guardian, petrol at the pump will be £1.50 very shortly as Oil hit $114 barrel yesterday. BA has already said it will make no profit at $120.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/apr/16/oil

 

[Donny Dave]

I don't make myself very popular telling people this stuff, but I think they ought to know, its surprising how many don't. The information is widely available in good newspapers, on financial websites and so on and is no secret.

If it's reasonable, and presented fairly, then there is no problem in posting it. It all adds to the debate. It doesn't matter if people like it or not.

There's no silver bullet, and of course I meant more rail freight in general, not necessarily for that flow. All I know is business as usual has now finished, whether we like it or not.

What a lot of people don't realise is that at a 7% growth in usage (we're seeing much higher than that in Asia) it means in the next 10 years, humanity uses the same amount of resources as it did in ALL of it's history.

Oil production has been flat for a number of years (you can check these figures from the IEA or their US counterpart http://www.eia.doe.gov/aer/txt/ptb1105.html ) and demand keeps on surging, we'll have to come up with alternatives or re-engineer our economy. Either way, a tax cut would only be a short term measure and only increase demand and therefore prices. The other option is rationing as they did in the 50s/70s.

According to this morning's Guardian, petrol at the pump will be £1.50 very shortly as Oil hit $114 barrel yesterday. BA has already said it will make no profit at $120.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/apr/16/oil

My main concern is, where is my next job going to come from?

If goods aren't being transported around the country, then that means people are not buying those products. So less needs to be moved. It's all a big circle. Allied this to the fact that the government has welcomed immigrants with open arms, who then take all the jobs and send their money home means there is less money in the country to buy various products. This has helped the Polish economy that much, they can now afford to employ all those who came over here in the first place.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7316261.stm

Great news in theory, as thst should mean more jobs for British people, but in truth, the economy has been badly damaged, so any jobs that do come around, will only be temporary. This starts the cycle all over again. People will save their money for the bad times, so products will not need to be transported, so jobs will be hard to come by.

The government needs to sort this out. If this means cutting lots of civil serservice jobs, and getting rid of their lucrative pension schemes to make the money available, and cutting red tape, then they have to do it. Otherwise, it won't just be the haulage companies going out of business.

 

[Metroland]

It could be worse, you could be in the airline industry where fuel is tax free and 90% of their business is highly discretionary. 6 US airlines went bust last week.

It's a concern for all of us, I've been highly concerned for at least 2 years as I said and it's just something we're going to have to get used to.