Friday 10 July 2009

The Life Of The Parasitic Operator

An unpleasant title but an accurate description of a smaller operator that feeds off of a larger operator nearby. By feeding I mean undertaking work when the larger operator is above its capacity as opposed to consuming items of plant and machinery!

In our case we are the larger operator but are receiving a reasonable quantity of work from Ebley Coaches at the moment, both in driver and vehicle hire. I remain confused as to why such a volume of work should be available when surely it makes little sense to take on work when you know that you have neither the drivers or vehicles to cover it! I doubt that they are making any decent profit margin for this work but perhaps it has more to do with the competition for coaching work in the Stroud area?

In the main though, we restrict ourselves to covering school runs so as not to get involved in the messy business of tachographs!

Making hay while the sun shines as inevitably this source of work will dry up at the end of term!