The terms under which the carbon tax was implemented and refunded were thus changing continually during 2009 under the influence of various bodies representing drivers, haulage companies and shippers.
We need this with a view to road safety, and we need it in order to ensure fair conditions of competition for those haulage contractors and drivers who observe the rules.
The threat of a national fuel strike has receded after the Acas conciliation service confirmed that peace talks between tanker drivers and haulage companies will take place on Wednesday.
And DriveCam, which was developed to help organisations with fleets of drivers, like haulage companies, monitor their drivers' performances, uses a system which relies on two cameras - one pointing at the road, and one monitoring the driver - to record instances of bad driving such as texting or tailgating.
Haulage contractors and professional drivers often operate in more than one European country.
It follows, then, that we must ensure that the haulage firms and the drivers who work for them do not see the rules and the monitoring of them as some sort of bureaucratic harassment, and that we must, rather than allowing people to talk only about the evils of Europe, always turn the conversation round to the added value that will accrue to it through improved road safety.
The drivers complain that haulage companies' efforts to outwit the Zetas are inevitably met with counter-measures.
Craig Eley, a Gateshead-based haulage boss, said he hoped drivers would organise similar protests at fuel terminals in Sunderland and Middlesbrough today following slow-rolling demonstrations by truckers and farmers on the A1 in Northumbria and the main A55 coast road in north Wales yesterday.
More than 2,000 tanker drivers at seven haulage companies were initially balloted.
Mr Everitt, who works as a forklift truck driver at a haulage firm, added: "Even the foreigners I work with are saying we've got too many now".
