Not so with Betz: his Reutlingen-based company is Europe's biggest haulier.
"Originally the oil companies used to give out 10-year contracts to the hauliers, but it's slowly been eroded to three or four-year contracts.
Compact was not a word that sprang to mind as I surveyed my family's home and haulier for the weekend ahead: a shining, eight-wheeled convoy that filled the tarmac chasm between garden deliveries and the trolley rack.
Besides wind farms, nuclear plants and new power lines, Britain's hauliers are looking forward to future announcements on port developments, its housebuilders to new towns and its airlines to upgraded airports and to conveniently tighter timetables for such developments.
Food producers in Cambridgeshire are sending 145 tonnes of beet to Somerset, delivered free by some of the county's hauliers.
It is, no doubt, the most important law on the basis of which Europe's hauliers and bus companies have to operate, and it has developed over the course of twenty years.
The BBC's Lorna Gordon talked to haulier Chris Flynn about the impact of the high prices and what it means for his company, CFT Services.
"This situation cannot continue because it's putting hauliers at risk, in terms of their lives and their livelihoods.
Everyone suffers from high fuel prices,' said Chris McNamara, a London haulier.
Exmoor-based livestock haulier Denis Fuller Livestock Transport used local P2P lending enterprise Folk2Folk to acquire bigger premises.
Haulier Eddie Stobart provides its drivers with subsidised cafes in many of its 50 depots across the country.
