UK delivery firms stock up on fuel as supply threat remains

Britain’s delivery companies have been dusting off their fuel contingency plans in recent days, as the threat of strikes by fuel distribution workers has led to panic buying in fuel stations, leading to fuel shortages. Unite, the country’s biggest union, today ruled out strike action over the Easter weekend, but is not completely withdrawing its threat that tanker drivers will stop work.

The union is campaigning for a range of safety and pay conditions for fuel distribution workers, including new health and safety standards, training, pension upgrades, minimum pay standards and sickness or redundancy arrangements.

Unite’s 2,000 members supply around 90% of UK fuel stations. The union insists it is only seeking minimum standards for tanker drivers seen in other industries.

UK consumers have been lining up at fuel stations to fill up their cars as panic set in about imminent strike action by the tanker drivers. Yesterday saw nationwide demand for petrol increase by up to 358% compared to the same day last week, according to the Retail Motor Industry Federation.

Ministers, who have been widely blamed for their handling of the Unite dispute and the fuel supply crisis, temporarily relaxed industry standards for tanker drivers’ hours today to help get extra fuel supplies through.

Unite assistant general secretary Diana Holland confirmed today: “We will not be calling Easter strike action as we focus on substantive talks.

“We do still retain the right to call strike action for after Easter, should those talks break down.”

Contingency plans

UK mail and express companies said they were following the situation closely, and were implementing fuel contingency plans to try to mitigate any potential strike action as much as possible.

Birmingham-based UK Mail, which has a network of 2,500 vehicles at more than 55 sites, said it had a “thoroughly tested” plan to avoid interruption of delivery services.

The mail and parcel delivery company said it had up to 25 days of fuel stored, and was keeping its fuel supplies topped up. The firm has an agreement with its fuel supplier for access to potentially a further 90,000 litres of fuel, it said.

“Our fuel will be prioritised to our collection and delivery fleet with non-essential UK Mail drivers being required to use petrol stations,” the company said.

“We are confident the measures we have planned will give us the best opportunity possible to maintain business as usual, but we will provide more information if and when the situation develops.”

Express parcels carrier TNT Express said it was also “confident” of withstanding threats to its delivery operations from tanker driver strike action.

The company said it holds “extensive” fuel stocks at more than 50 depots in its network, with director of operations in Ireland and the UK, Simon Harper, stating that contingency planning is already an “important” part of TNT’s operating model.

TNT has a central control system for checking the fuel consumption of vehicles via a common dashboard system. The company said its contingency planning had helped it to avoid disruption during oil facility blockades in the year 2000, while some rivals had seen operations come to a halt “after a couple of days”.

The company said it also has the largest fleet of electric vehicles in the UK express business.

Harper said: “Disruption in supply is unlikely to adversely affect our operations because of our own fuel bunkers. If the price goes up further or general supply is interrupted, any delivery company without a clear strategy and the ability to execute it might be left counting the cost.”