"While this group made a quick sale, legitimate businesses and hauliers suffered greatly with property stolen, deliveries cancelled, excess payments on insurance and not to mention the inconvenience to their customers," he said.
"Ascroft, it appears, made the contacts to sell the haul on, while Price and others travelled the country to target hauliers to steal the vehicles and the consignments.
Dear oil is the reason for today's pricey petrol, and the global oil market is beyond the government's control.So while British hauliers are watching their fuel bills soar, so are their European counterparts.
Letting other people in was always a backward step.By 2001 he was king of Britain's independent road hauliers.
It is in the best interests of hauliers to improve their fuel efficiency.Justin Keeble Cambridge, CambridgeshireSIR – You dismissed the notion of peak oil as a factor in high oil prices stating that "there is little evidence to support the doctrine of 'peak oil' in its extreme form.
In his pre-budget report this week, Mr Brown said that there was after all to be special help for hauliers, and farmers, and yes for the general motorist too, in the form of a "freeze" (actually a cut) in fuel duty.
Most hauliers now suffer labour turnover of 100% a year.Freight railways' very success is starting to create difficulties for them.
The government's own research shows that the claim that private motorists and hauliers are over-taxed in Britain is also hard to sustain.
A recent study for the Automobile Association by Stephen Glaister and Dan Graham of Imperial College says that fuel prices would have to rise by 10% a year to keep traffic at current levels.The chancellor's cuts in fuel and vehicle excise duties for hauliers are even less justified.
The chancellor's planned introduction of a "Vignette" or licence system to make foreign hauliers pay for the use of British roads follows the practice of other EU countries.
He has recently demanded that Mr Brown use tax revenues from North Sea oil to subsidise the fuel bills of farmers, fishermen and hauliers, attacked the government over post-office closures and condemned its withdrawal of a plan to subsidise the production of renewable energy on Scottish islands.He is helped by disarray within his opponents' ranks.
