In the big top! - MAN inmotion

Industry Operating challenges
Des Evans is concerned ... the transport
industry he has served for many years is facing the biggest
challenges of its life. At a recent industry function he asked
one major operator what the three
most pressing issues facing the industry
were: the answers were unequivocal.
Importantly, they echoed what Evans
had already heard from countless,
similarly reliable sources – ‘Cost’... and
in particular fuel; ‘Credit’... or rather the lack of it; and
‘Compliance’... and the ever rising burden of ensuring it.
So at a major industry press gathering just a few weeks
14
inmotion
1|2012
Cost ...
Credit ...
Compliance
If there are three bigger issues facing the
operating industry, nobody has told MAN’s
UK CEO, Des Evans, about them.
“Can the operating
industry survive in
its current form?”
ago, he posed this question of the 40 journalists present –
“Can the operating industry survive in its current form?”
A glance at the 2011 Motor Transport Top 100 list of UK
operators shows an average of just 3%
Return on Sales (ROS): even in these
straightened economic times, significantly
lower than other major core UK
industries. Against that ROS figure,
Evans points to estimates from highlyregarded
sources of a 5% rise in ‘general operating costs’
such as tyres, insurances, R&M, utilities and so on and an
accompanying forecast of 13% fuel cost increases -