It was announced yesterday with the budget that £1.4 billion is to be spent on the low carbon sector.

To give all industries the confidence to invest in low-carbon technologies, Alistair Darling also announced the world’s first carbon budget and committed Britain to cut carbon emissions by 34 per cent by 2020. We were disappointed not to see any clear intention of these funds specifically to reduce carbon emissions in the haulage industry.

Instead there was outrage at the decision of Government yet again raise fuel tax. Alistair Darling announced that fuel duty would rise by 2p per litre in September and then by 1p above inflation every April for the next four years.

“With rates being squeezed and deflationary worries growing, now is not the time to saddle forwarders’ haulage operations with extra fuel duty costs,” said Peter Quantrill, director general of the British International Freight Association (Bifa).

The Freight Transport Association (FTA) said the cost of Septembers’ fuel duty hike, in addition to the increase of 2p per litre back in December, will cost the industry an extra £553m and cause businesses to go bust.

“Insolvency in the logistics sector has doubled in the last year and the number of HGV drivers looking for work has almost quadrupled. What more evidence does the government need that parts of the sector are on their knees,” said FTA policy director James Hookham.

Now, we know that 25% of lorries run empty and many run at less than an optimal level but this truck exposed by Google Sreetview in New Orleans USA really does take it!

Either they thought, “better than nothing” or the yellow dumper druck has been exposed to some crazy shrinking ray gun!

It’s a sad fact that some 25% of lorries and 15% of vans on Britain’s roads run completely empty. This wastage actually accounts for around 7.2% of the UK’s carbon footprint – a massive problem I’m sure you will agree.

To help publicise the magnitude of the problem, and the effectiveness of Shiply we have set up our own carbon counter page. This keeps a running tally of the CO2 we have been saving by matching users with transport providers already making similar trips.

As you can see, to date (since just June 2008), we have saved over 276,000kg of CO2 and to put that into perspective that is about the same as you flying from London to New York 455 times!

We’ve helped to save over 1,1,138,30 otherwise wasteful miles and so a big thank you must go out to our green transport heroes and users for their efforts.

You can keep up to date on how Shiply is getting on with the stats here.

Havering Council, a London borough have announced that they intend to lift the current night time ban on lorry deliveries from 2010.

The London Lorry Control Scheme has been viewed by many within the industry and restrictive and does little to help ease the “last mile” problem.

Currently, lorries are charged up to £500 fixed penalties if they are caught carrying out deliveries at weekends and evenings.

Councillor Michael Armstrong, who is the cabinet minister for housing, public protection and regeneration, said:

“The money could be spent helping businesses and in regeneration. We are in a recession after all.”

We agree and furthermore, by restricting deliveries to daytime only there is an increase in the number of failed deliveries. This is not only an inconvenience to the recipients but also the delivery driver. Not to mention, there is also the detrimental impact on the environment – having to make the trip more than once!

We’re proud to be supporting PetrolPrices.com new campaign launched today to stop fuel tax going up again.

You can read all about it on the site below:

http://www.petrolprices.com/itsyourduty/

The aim is to stop another 2p fuel duty hike, to get the Government to explain how our fuel tax is spent, and to demand that fuel tax is spent on improving transport in the UK.

Thanks in advance for your support! Get involved.

Previously, Shiply only allowed you to list up to one vehicle at a time to move from point A-B.

We have listened to your requests and have learnt that many of you often have to move several vehicles at a time and so want to consolidate these into one simple shipment request.

So, we are pleased to announce that there is now the option when listing a vehicle shipment, be it a car, motorbike or other to add extra vehicles to your request. In fact, you can request as many as you like – there is no limit!

We hope that by adding this functionality this will further help both users and transport providers when it comes to moving multiple vehicles.

As always on a Friday, we like to post up a video which has caught our attention over the week.

Now, this one is quite something. A truck driver appears to have forgotten to lower his trailer and the result is pretty staggering! Take a look for yourselves:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xvs90XFJzI]

Shipley

Our customers often slightly miss-type our name as shipley into Google or the address bar when trying to find Shiply. Unlike the town in Yorkshire, we are spelt without the “e”. So, it’s not Shipley but is Shiply.

Our site is actually at: http://www.shiply.com/. Enjoy!

We are not: Shipley.