The Hub

As a senior executive in the UK truck industry for more than 40 years I am very surprised to learn that no truck manufacturer will be present at the 2016 CV Show.

Ocado suffered at the hand of Amazon yet again last week, when the e-retail giant said it was expanding the catalogue of products on offer as part of its new Amazon Pantry service.

Can HGVs ever be weaned off their addiction to diesel? Alternatives such as recycled chip fat, natural gas, electric pantographs or even shire horses (see Commercial Motor 26 November for a trip down memory lane) still seem a long way from the mainstream.

As ever with things such as the Autumn Statement and Spending Review, the devil is in the detail – in the latter’s case about 160-plus pages of detail.

Well, it seems that it’s going to happen. I’m not trying to make any political points when I say that I was sceptical when it was first announced. Measures which hit employers in the pocket – which this surely will – have a tendency of entering that wonderful Westminster black hole known as the U-turn.

Amazon’s quest to gain a foothold in the UK grocery market has seen another development, with the UK branch of the online retailer launching its grocery box delivery service, Amazon Pantry.

The latest UK Logistics Confidence Index compiled by Barclays and Moore Stephens found operators are generally still pretty optimistic about the prospects for themselves and the logistics industry – but not as optimistic as they were.

Black Friday came, as most domineering capitalist ideas do, from the USA. It was the idea of some canny retailers, filling the public holiday void between Thanksgiving on the Thursday and the weekend; a holiday that bores the American public as much as Boxing Day does for us Brits. So why not shop? Then, it came over here….

With Wincanton renewing its focus on logistics by disposing of its Records Management business earlier this month, and now posting a 5.8% increase in half-year turnover, new chief executive Adrian Colman is beginning to make his mark.

Confidence levels remain strong in the logistics sector, with 73% of respondents to the recent UK Logistics Confidence Index survey suggesting the outlook for the sector would improve or stay the same and only a quarter suggesting conditions were more difficult now than six months ago.