Over 900 road hauliers and independent truckers, descended on Parliament yesterday to lobby their MPs to urgently and immediately reduce the price of fuel.
Frustration was building up as truckers parked up on the A40, 600 lorries strong, and made their way to Westminster, to press their demands.
They heard their leaders from the National Transport Association and Transaction, demand a fuel subsidy, to make hauliers ‘essential services’ like trains and buses.
The hauliers leaders are also demanding a standard Euro-wide price for fuel for all users, and an inquiry as to why diesel is now more expensive than petrol.
Andy Sheridan said: ‘I want Brown to listen to reason, and bring down the cost of fuel. If I’m going to lose my business then I’ll go out fighting
‘It took us nearly bringing the country to its knees the last time, just to get them to listen to us, and now we are exactly back where we were.
‘I’m the fourth generation to go into our business and these are the worst trading conditions I’ve seen for a long time.
‘It’s not just my livelihood that is going, its the 35 guys that work for me.
‘I’d like the Brown government to give us an essential users rebate as they do for the railways and buses. What is the logic of making fuel expensive? We deliver the goods, to keep the country going.
‘Brown has to have a mechanism for easing out the peaks and troughs because if we attempt to pass on the increases to customers then we get spiralling inflation.’
‘Stuart Hardman from M&K Green Transport in Warrington Cheshire said, ‘We should block off the whole country. Take all the trucks off the road for a week, or even two days for that matter. There would be nothing in the shops.
Stuart Hosey said: ‘We want the government to offset and moderate the fuel price increases.
‘The government haven’t done their job. They are an organisation that taxes 60p on a litre and are making £14 billion off taxing the oil in the north sea. They are the new “fat cats”.
‘The government have some obligation to put something back, not just for hauliers but for fishermen, farmers and hard pressed families, to keep fragile communities going.
‘I fear that if the government doesn’t listen, we will find people doing things we would find hard to condemn.’
Rob Armaston, an owner driver from Bradbury said: ‘We’ll have to do anything and everything that it takes.
‘Brown should be forced out. He is unelected as far as I am concerned.
Asked what further action Transaction was contemplating in the event there was no movement on the price of diesel fuel in the next few weeks, Seymour Carroll, President of Transaction told News Line: ‘People are so desperate, there is bound to be fringe activity’.
