Transport companies get a 3% increase in costs

Some significant cost increases to the Trucking Industry in the last few days.

Firstly the long awaited increase in the Holidays Act from 3 weeks to 4 weeks. I was thinking about the implication of this to the industry. We currently have around 25,000 ‘Heavy’ Truck drivers. Each of them is now entitled to an additional 1 weeks leave. For an industry that it already short of drivers, it now needs around another 500 drivers just to cover the additional 125,000 days annual leave to be taken this year.

Don’t worry about finding an additional 500 drivers, it will be easy – Yeah Right

The second issue is the increase in Road User Charges with 48 hours notice. It is estimated that the 11% increase in RUC will increase operators costs by 1%. This is a significant amount of money that can not be recouped from customers instantly.

A 3% increase to transport companies costs from 1 April. Welcome to the new financial year guys. Sorry I don’t have any solutions apart from getting a new government.