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Issue 1 2014 Freight Business Journal Move over, Bugsby


The Port of London Authority’s regular public meetings are always informative and entertaining events. In the freight industry, we think of the PLA mainly in terms of the major container terminals at Tilbury and London Gateway but it is in fact responsible for the whole tidal river right up to the leafy suburbia of Richmond and Teddington. Chief executive Richard


Everitt has to be prepared for any question, ranging from bad behaviour by tug captains and commuter vessels, through VAT on houseboats to the lady who wanted to come into central London to do some shopping “but I couldn’t find anywhere to tie up my dinghy.”


Now, though, the PLA seems set to become embroiled in a real controversy. Like the shiſting shoals of the river itself, the names given to various stretches of the Thames have changed over the years - King’s Reach, near Waterloo, for instance, only dates back to the 1930s. Now there is a proposal to


rename Greenwich’s Bugsby’s Reach as Waterman’s Reach. PLA chief harbourmaster David Phillips told November’s public meeting that there had been a request by the Company of Watermen to rename Bugsby’s Reach Waterman’s Reach to commence their 500th anniversary. Bugsby was a market gardener, and the name first appears sometime in


Easybus


This isn’t the ultimate in integrated passenger transport – but perhaps it should be. One of Volga-Dnepr Airlines’ IL-76 freighters recently carried an 18-metre bus from Turin


to Astana, Kazakhstan. Iveco Italy urgently needed


to deliver the bus to the capital of Kazakhstan for a special promotion on 25 November


and the flight, was organised by Chapman-Freeborn Airchartering Italy. There were some issues with


loading the bus safely into the plane’s 19-metre cargo, solved by reducing the angle of the aircraſt ramp – but what an elegant solution to present-day transport problems, I thought. Just hop on the no. 73 at your local bus stop and before you know it, you could be transported to the far ends of the earth. And the seats in most municipal


buses are probably a darned sight more comfortable than Ryanair’s.


Claridon sponsors Spitfire-seeker


Essex forwarder Claridon Group has stepped in to help save aviation enthusiast David Cundall in his bid to find a cache of buried Spitfires in Burma. The Lincolnshire farmer has been on a dogged mission these past 16 years following up persistent reports that a cache of brand new unassembled models of the iconic World War II fighter are buried in crates somewhere in the country. While many other spitfires have


been preserved, and some are still flying, finding ones in original condition would be a real coup for aviation museums throughout the world. New, unassembled planes would tell us a huge amount about how the planes were put together, and the project could create hundreds of jobs too. An earlier lead that the planes


were buried somewhere near Yangon airport proved fruitless and now most of the intrepid Mr Cundall’s savings have gone. For a while, the project looked doomed, but Claridon has stepped in to provide the funding to allow the project to continue. Claridon, based at Stanford-le-


Hope on the doorstop of the new London Gateway port, has a strong connection with Burma, being the first privately owned UK company to set up there. And, as Mr Cundall himself says, with the company’s 20-plus years experience in military logistics, “the Spitfires could not be in better hands when they are eventually shipped back to the UK.” Note the word ‘when’. There


are those who doubt the planes’ existence,


but the people at


Claridon are convinced that this time, he is onto a winner. Group MD Chris Scott said: “Aſter


meeting David and listening to how he has devoted a large part of his life as well as his life savings trying to find these iconic aircraſt which played such a pivotal role in WW2, and seeing his deep rooted passion for preserving part of our history and heritage for generations to come, we just had to get involved. David’s ‘never give up attitude’ along with his incredible drive deserves to be applauded and supported throughout the country. Claridon Group are proud to partner David and provide the funding to enable him and his team to find the Spitfires. We will be supporting David every step of the way and look forward to bringing the Spitfires back home for him.”


You really, really shouldn’t have


Leading consumer delivery specialist Hermes has identified a new hazard for the online industry – well-refreshed customers buying goods aſter a night on the town. The International Online Shopping Survey 2013, which covers 1,000 responses from consumers in the UK, Russia and Germany – none of them countries with an aversion to the odd drink or two – found that shoppers bought goods such as ice cream makers or Japanese sex dolls. An unpregnant, and possibly even male shopper even bought a full set of maternity clothes.


Very oſten, the first reminder for shoppers of their ill-advised foray onto the Web a couple of nights before is when the courier turns up to deliver the goods. Across the three countries,


clothes were the number one item that revellers sought aſter returning


home but for UK


shoppers sex aids came second in the list. (Nothing terribly surprising about that, except perhaps that they weren’t in first place.) Still, during the so-called rather than go


Festive Season, to the trouble of returning all


these unwanted items, why not keep them in case you get an unexpected present and need to reciprocate? (And there are always birthdays and wedding anniversaries.) Well, I’m sure many people would appreciate an ice-cream maker, at least. Maternity clothes might be a


bit more tricky – perhaps for the career woman in your life, or even a go-getting female work colleague, as a sort of hint? The Japanese sex doll might


be a bit harder to place, without giving undue offence. Still, there’s always the Vicar’s bring & buy sale.


Droning on


Many people that know me tell me that I should get out more, but it’s not really my fault – it’s Amazon’s. An order for five identical boxes of a mundane but essential household product has, at the time of writing, yielded three boxes delivered, one ‘out for delivery’ and another seemingly still stuck in Swansea, so I’m effectively under indefinite house arrest. But perhaps salvation is at


hand. The online delivery giant is promising to get packages into customers’ hands in 30 minutes or less using unmanned aerial vehicles, according to its latest press release. This is presumably a variation of the sort of ‘drone’ technology currently bringing death and destruction to a Middle East country near you. “From a technology point


of view, we’ll be ready to enter commercial operations as soon


as the necessary regulations are in place, - possibly by 2015,” says Amazon. I suppose anything is worth


a try, but I for one am not holding my breath. Quite apart from anything else, given the number of personal firearms in circulation in the US, to say nothing of South London, what are the chances of your delivery making it to your door in one piece?


the early 19th century – “but the Watermen have been associated with the river for much longer than that,” Mr Phillips pointed out. Maybe so, though I can’t help


thinking that perhaps this is part of the creeping ‘gentrification’ of the river and its surroundings. You see, Watermen’s Reach does have a more elegant ring to it than ‘Bugsby’, who sounds like a Walt Disney creation. Surrey Docks became the much less workaday Surrey Quays back in the 1980s as part of the Docklands redevelopment while I seem to remember the resolutely proletarian-sounding Stepney East railway station becoming Limehouse at much the same time.


///FREIGHT BREAK


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