Rising fuel prices driving truckers out of business

HAULIERS are offering their trucks for sale and desperately trying to get out of the industry. Major job losses are likely unless action is taken to ease the burden of escalating diesel prices, it was warned yesterday.

Already some operators are phoning their competitors and offering their trucks for sale as part of desperate measures to dig their way of a “black hole” of increasing debt.

Mattie O’Shea, managing director of Waterford Transport, which employs 33 people at Ballindud on the outskirts of the city, said that only yesterday he had received a call from a transporter from up the country offering his trucks for sale.