In Praise of Hauliers

We sometimes get minor gripes about the hauliers we use although the vast majority of loads hauled run very smoothly.

I recently had a problem with a courier moving a sample of wheat from a farm to a watermill for the watermill to test. This was organised as a "next day" service and cost over £2 per kg delivered. It was not collected the next day or the day after but on the 3rd day after it should have been. I still don't know when or if it will be delivered.

Fuming on the phone to the courier I made a few calculations and reported to the courier company that:

"As a business we deliver in excess of 20,000 kg of material each year. Sometimes this needs to fit in with the specific collection requirements of the farmer loading and often needs to meet a specific tipping time at the delivery point. This is done for a charge on average of about £0.01 per kg.

Sometimes our hauliers don't get it right but they are all far better than the courier company I have recently had dealings with at a fraction of the cost - about 1/200th of the cost to be precise.

Thankfully we don't use couriers too often. Remember it's two sugars in his mug of tea next time your haulier turns up!