Industry News

Stay on top of the latest issues that affect the road transport industry in the UK. Whether you’re interested in clean air zones, Brexit, alternative fuels, earned recognition or the HGV driver shortage, or you want to know the latest in compliance, health and safety and O-licence law to keep your business running legally and efficiently.

Westminster Bridge will be affected by the London Olympics
Industry News

Olympics road race disruption details published

March 14, 2012

The timings, temporary road closures and parking restrictions that will be in place during the Olympic and Paralympic Games have been revealed. With road events in London scheduled to take place on seven of the 16 days of the Olympic Games and one day of the Paralympic Games, fleet operators will need to plan ahead to ensure service levels are maintained. It comes as Transport for London (TfL)  starts contacting residents and businesses along the road cycling, triathlon, marathon and […]

Industry News

DHL expands Unilever warehousing capacity

March 14, 2012 Peter Steele

DHL Supply Chain has opened its expanded capacity warehouse for long-term customer Unilever, marking the end of a 21 month project. The Cannock, Staffordshire, centre has the capacity to house 100,000 pallets and will handle all of Unilever’s homecare and ambient food lines for the UK and Ireland – including brands such as Persil, Marmite and PG Tips. Expanding the Cannock site – designed specifically to bring both product categories under the same roof for combined customer orders- has also […]

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Industry News

Labour warns on longer semi-trailer cyclist danger

March 13, 2012

Labour is calling on the government to “reverse its reckless decision” to give the go-ahead for a ten-year trial of longer semi-trailers. In a statement outlining the opposition’s current road transport policy, shadow transport secretary Maria Eagle MP says ministers must “stop being dogmatic” and examine evidence from the Department for Transport (DfT) that the move towards 14.6m and 15.65m trailers could lead to more cyclist casualties. She adds that Labour would use money from the proposed lorry road user […]

Industry News

Operators Favour 15.65m

March 13, 2012

Early indications suggest that the larger 15.65m longer semi-trailer size is proving a more popular option than its 14.6m counterpart in the Department for Transport’s (DfT) ten-year trial of the new lengths, announced last December. According to the DfT, “two or three” companies have returned their allowance of the smaller 14.6m design and MT has learnt the government is now permitting firms to swap allocations them between themselves, or even give them away as long as no business trials more […]

Industry News

APN and TfL hold ‘productive’ pre-Olympics briefing

March 9, 2012 Peter Steele

Transport for London (TfL) has held an Olympic briefing with members of the Association of Pallet Networks (APN) to build ties ahead of this summer’s Games. Despite APN representing eight networks consisting of more than 650 hauliers, chairman Paul Sanders has previously expressed frustration at a lack of engagement with Olympic organisers, which the event rectified. Sanders complimented TfL on bringing his members up to speed, and describes the meeting late last month as positive and productive, although he concedes […]

Industry News

Save Truckpol campaign

February 23, 2012 Motor Transport

Major operators are throwing their weight behind a campaign to save TruckPol, led by MT’s sister magazine Commercial Motor, the Road Haulage Association and the Freight Transport Association. Since the withdrawal of its government grant last April, the freight crime intelligence unit has managed to survive on funding from the private sector, including haulage firms and insurance companies. However, without any government money available for the next financial year, the unit is unable to keep operating purely on industry support […]

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Industry News

Police launch URTU fraud investigation

February 23, 2012 Motor Transport

Seven men, including URTU general secretary Bob Monks, have been released on bail after a series of co-ordinated arrests as part of an investigation into alleged fraud offences relating to LGV licences and Driver CPC. The operation, conducted by Greater Manchester Police’s Volume Fraud unit in conjunction with the Driving Standards Agency (DSA), also saw a warrant executed at URTU HQ in Cheadle Hulme on Wednesday 15 February. Among those arrested were URTU national officer Mel Thornton; regional officer Lee […]

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Industry News

Plan now for Olympics

February 23, 2012 Motor Transport

This summer it won’t be business as usual for the road transport industry. The world’s biggest sporting event is hitting UK shores on 27 July and bringing with it a host of traffic restrictions and road closures that will result in changes to delivery patterns and the way you normally operate. If you don’t think the Olympics are going to affect you or your customers, think again. Even if you don’t have any customers based on the Olympic Route Network […]

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Industry News

Operators urged to cut carbon

February 23, 2012 Motor Transport

The FTA has urged operators to join its Logistics Carbon Reduction Scheme (LCRS) to strengthen its efforts to avoid government action over commercial vehicle emissions. Evidence from the scheme, which published its second annual report this week, will be submitted to the DfT’s Freight Review later this year. The FTA hopes the evidence will convince the review – which is looking at the efforts the sector is making to cut emissions – that there is no need to regulate to […]

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Industry News

Cabotage deal in the offing

February 23, 2012 Motor Transport

UK and Irish governments are set to meet next month to discuss cabotage regulations after intense lobbying from Irish hauliers. For years hauliers in both countries have delivered trailers to ports, where they were collected for inward delivery by a driver working in that country. This practice falls foul of cabotage rules introduced in 2010 which say that an international driver can only carry out three domestic jobs within seven days once he has delivered his load. The dropped trailers […]