Back in action

Apologies for blogging absence, been up to my whassnames with the new job at the Road Transport Group.

Anyway, had an interesting session downloading some of my thoughts on the current state of the road transport industry with a representative of the investment community this morning. General gist from me was that clearly the underlying issue is the lack of economic activity which has devastated the need to move goods throughout Europe and the knock on effects of that have been a collapse in everything we know as an industry.

We've still a long way to go before there's any signs of a recovery in my opinion - Ford reckons 2013 before the new van market gets back to 2007 levels - but I sense we're all getting a bit browned off with the recession. When the 'collective will' decides times up on the downturn then that has to be the first sign confidence may be on the way back.

At the European truck parking conference I chaired a couple of weeks back, the Eurocrats were still talking of a doubling of road freight volumes over the next 20 years - can't come soon enough...