Foreign Trucks Cause Huge Damage To British Roads

Thursday, 6. May 2010

You would no doubt have followed my reporting of the major pot hole problem that local authorities face following the harsh winter with no money to spend. But it wasn’t just the bad weather that led to the problems, it was the increase in Johnny Foreigner trucks covering 600 million miles on our roads last year. The problem, according to the Department for Transport, is that these trucks use our public roads but don’t contribute to their upkeep by buying fuel in this country. On average drivers only bought 10 litres of fuel whilst they were here, which means that the 40 tonne, multi axle trucks that wear out our roads and contribute heavily to our pothole problem hardly pay a penny to carry out road maintenance. Our petrol cost in the UK isn’t too bad compared to Europe as we come 11^th in the list but the trucks use diesel and we are the second highest according to the AA so hardly surprising that the truckers fill up their million gallon tanks in Europe rather than in the UK and of course what about our own transport companies that drive over to Europe, I can see them paying an extra 10 pence per litre here before they drive into Europe, so it’s a bit of a double whammy. The outgoing government was looking into this issue and considering restricting the number of litres in a tank before the trucks left for the UK. Might seem like a good idea but who ends up paying when the transport companies are forced to buy more fuel in the UK, us of course in the shops so can’t win? By Graham Hill