Shell Drivers Talks Continue, with aim of avoiding strike.

After 10 hours of talks today between the unions and the two companies that deliver Shell’s fuel to the pumps no agreement has been reached.  Number 10 is still urging sensible use by consumers, and the petrol retailers are reporting that this is actually being the case.

Interestingly, the opinion of the petrol retailers association is that consumers are starting to alter their usage habbits, combining trips and maybe cutting down on the use of second vehicles.

Unfortunately, this change in usage patterns is not really an option for the courier industry, who are already working on optimising every trip made by every vehicle.  Couriers have already been working hard for many years, using established sites such as MTVan and CourierExchange to get back loads, hot shots, and top up jobs to make sure that their vans run as full as possible.

And peversely, as the fuel prices increase, the demand for couriers and deliveries increases, as the retailing world shifts further and further over towards online retailing.

It is hoped that the Shell talks will result in a satisfactory resolution, however eitherway, this incident has once again pushed fuel prices, and the importance of fuel, and the impact of fuel prices on everybody’s lives, back up to the front of the governments and the publics attention.

Courier Protest

Welcome to CourierProtest, a weblog for the courier industry to discuss and raise the profile of how the fuel prices are directly impacting their business.  The courier industry is worth £14bn to the UK annually, and there are over 11,000 businesses operating in it.

For more information about how and why this weblog was set up please see “Why CourierProtest?”