With Eddie Stobart set to return to Channel Five, Laurie Dealer asks; when will TV make a real go of road transport?
Eddie Stobart: Trucks & Trailers is back, again. Set for a third series starting 2 March 2012 the ‘observational documentary’ attracts 1.8 million viewers per episode and has created its participants into Truckfestesque celebrities.
The program was UK’s answer to Ice Road Truckers, which took the day-in-the-life of Canadian truckers driving on iced water into a scale of melodrama never before reached. “Drew has just minutes to negotiate the ice covered yard between the office and the truck before freezing temperatures start to affect his blood flow, potentially causing him to have a cardiac arrest, and that is something no one wants…on a Tuesday …”
Such hype got the makers Original Productions kicked off the frozen lakes and supplanted to the Dalton Highway in Alaska where ice, and its associated risks, remains the theme.
However, Stobart foreran the World’s Toughest Trucker, won by Billericay’s own ‘Disco Stu’ Stuart Barnes. Here fearless truckers from around the world had to compete is global challenges before delivering clay pots to a monastery the other side of the Himalayas in Tata truck.
Laurie Dealer presumes safely negotiating the facilities at Clacket Lane and tackling security at any RDC were seen as too risky. It left the casual viewer interpreting truckers as uniformed and pampered tackling comfortable delivery schedules, Rednecks pitting their wits against ice and daredevils driving a bit recklessly on badly built roads.
To liven it up we should mix and match; have ‘Rookie’ from WTT attempt to complete a drivers defect book, or IRT’s Hugh Rowland coping with a co-driver, or Stobart’s Mark Dixon pondering snow chains and bonneted dinosaurs.
I’d like to see a programme where the following takes place:
· The transport manager starts the week a driver down because ‘Dave from the Grave’ caught chicken pox over the weekend. Endless calls to the agency for a class two on £6.50 at short notice to do 22 drops before lunch time
· Or a programme where the MD chooses another Range Rover despite concerns from management over rising fuel duty and falling profit margins in a cut throat industry
· Or the blue-chip customer toying with the possibility of leaving the family-run haulier for a logistic giant with a warehouse and economy of scale setting an eye-watering economy of scope
· Or the owner driver who’s only contact with family is through the courts
Laurie Dealer suggests wannabe TV executives looking to lift the lid on road transport could focus on the following as a three-parter call Road Transport; It’s Part In Your Life and hang it on the rising cost of fuel.
Episode one: Route to market
Focus on the journey of goods at production, how it’s transported and distributed to the point of sale, and how the rising price of fuel affects the value of everyday goods. As an example take a set of toys made in China and potatoes grown in Norfolk.
Follow the toys, made, packed into a container, transported to the docks, loaded onto a ship (followed by a two week sail to UK) then unloaded at a UK port, container loaded onto a truck, driven to the warehouse, broken down and stored, then hand picked off the shelf and delivered to the store.
Spuds; dug up, delivered by tractor to a processor, bagged, loaded onto a truck, delivered to warehouse, split up and sent to RDCs, distributed regionally to shops.
Time, effort, cost, and amount of handling involved making it happen and why fuel duty is passed onto end users – a classic example for both Christmas and the weekly shopping bill.
Episode two: Chauffeurs and hauliers
Central is the person behind the wheel that deliver the food, consumable items, the white goods, furniture, fuel, the heavy machinery, and takes away waste materials, sewage, recycling and hazardous chemicals.
Focus on its rich history with B&Bs dotted up and down the country before sleeper cabs were invented, the winter of discontent and its heyday with continental trips east in the 1970s.
How you get a license and how much it costs (follow a group embarking on their tests), industry pay and conditions, Driver’s CPC, job security, ramshackle parking and service stations, expensive items in transit parked up in litter-covered road side lay-bys, crime, road rage, the unsociable hours, and talk to school leavers about a career in trucking?
Then shift the focus to their employers who have to balance rising fuel costs with diminishing margins. Look at how a haulier runs rolling stock, expenditure of buying new vehicles and trailers, the responsibility of keeping trucks compliant, finding work, routing, return loads, negotiating contracts with customers, training, insurance, overseas competition in the market, cabotage, warehousing, freight forwarding, export, diminishing industries…
Catalogue the demise of former transport operations (plenty to choose from) and focus on the consolidation and rise of logistic giants to dominate major blue-chip contracts with 3PL and 4PL transport systems and mechanisms.
And don’t forget the subsidy provided to move freight to rail. Is it really a viable future?
Episode three: Legislation
Governments’ budget, fuel duty, money raised and where it’s spent. Legislative commitment for truck and trailer manufacturers, working time directive, Driver’s CPC, emission targets, Whole Vehicle Type Approval, London’s Low Emission Zone, road charging, and toll roads.
Government’s revolving door to the Transport Minister office, fuel demonstrations and union strikes by tanker drivers over pay and conditions. Like the body, it’s all linked.
Footnote:
This message was brought to you by thin air, although the laptop, table, chair, and cup with its coffee, milk, and sugar, plus the fridge in which the milk sits, and the light bulbs, as its getting dark, were brought to you by a truck.
Th-th-th-th-th-th-that’s all folks!
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