I guess it is the economics of supply and demand. In these difficult financial times people will go for the cheapest option, in many cases. With respect to the man you know, putting up banners isn't something that can be done badly and if the price for the service is right somebody who wants banners put up will go for the cheapest.
If it was something more demanding, dentistry, boiler servicing, made to measure clothing etc one would tend to go for the quality of the service, not the price. I do agree that it sounds a bit of a waste of time, mileage and extra CO2 but there we are.
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I do wonder if it may be caused by the way a contract is tendered for?
Certainly in the case of transport, a big firm like Kellogs or Unilever will award a complete contract to the best tender. That means doing all the deliveries from the far north of Scotland to the far south west of England.
Usually there is a clause to say that the work must't be contracted out at all, because the Hauliers reputation and Goods in Transit Insurance covers the work.
This means that you may well see Joe Bloggs from 2 miles up the road from you delivering 2 pallets in Inverness for Kellogs while you're there delivering 3 pallets for Unilever!
It does seem strange but the customer pays their money and has the right to insist on the firm of their choice doing their work.
Pat
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In the same vein, what's with a transporter load of Peugeots heading south from Edinburgh on the A1 while passing an almost identical load driving north?
And why on earth was my company car transported all the way from a dealer in Basingstoke to Edinburgh when the local dealer could have supplied it? And why, when they delievred the car damaged, did they transport it all the way back to Basingstoke and back again instead of siply using the local dealer?
The world's going mad!
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The world's going mad!
The world has been going that way for a long time. What about the well-known example of supermarket carrots being grown in Norfolk, trucked all the way to Lancashire to be washed and packed, than trucked again to the distribution centre somewhere else. The over-riding logic comes from the bean-counters (forgive pun).
Life is no longer run on a human scale, and has not been for a century or so. Factories and other businesses are (have to be, to be commercially viable) so big that when an established one closes, whole purpose-built villages are out of work. OK during the growth phase - dire afterwards.
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>>Life is no longer run on a human scale...
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But wine transport etc is BIG
tinyurl.com/yz9qjjx
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Drive to corby, All you can see is acres and acres of distribution warehouses. Drive along the M6 from the M1. Again miles and miles of distribution warehouses. We are turning into a country where the only business going on is stuff being moved from place to place.
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... and a good deal of that 'stuff' has been imported ...
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The daftest one I have heard reported was shipping seafood from the UK to the far east, (possibly Thailand), for packaging and returning it to the UK for sale.
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Jersey Royal potatoes are grown in Jersey (obviously) but shipped to mainland UK for cleaning and packing and some of them go back to Jersey to be sold on.
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Perhaps it's the 'we want it now' or 'just in time' mentality.
I always fancied a retirement job on the canals, moving products SLOWLY around the country (but obviously not fresh milk or eggs).
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Although I agree with the green sentiment expressed, I can't agree it's somehow less efficient.
Whether or not you drive 200 miles to fix windows or ship carrots up & down the motorway, the price of the goods or services provided must be competitive with alternatives.
The apparent 'waste' or inefficiency is in fact already in the price. If it was cheaper to have all window replacement firms working locally only - that would happen. Same with carrots from Lincolnshire, prawns from Thailand & fine green beans from Kenya.
The 'carbon foot print' is accounted for - allowing for the efficeincy of markets in traded goods/services - there is no better way of doing it. When there is, somebody will find it & do it!
Edited by woodbines on 01/12/2009 at 12:26
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I can't agree it's somehow less efficient. The price of the goods or services provided must be competitive with alternatives.
No, the pointless travelling certainly can be made to look 'efficient' - it uses less manpower to reduce cost. All that need be done is for the cost of transporting to be less than the saving in manpower.
But the reason for cherry-pickers (to return to the OP) to come from outside London may be simply that the overheads of London-based cherry-picker hirers are much more - down to cost of premises basically. So because land is dear in London, more fuel is burnt on the M1.
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I can't agree it's somehow less efficient. The price of the goods or services provided must be competitive with alternatives.
No, the pointless travelling certainly can be made to look 'efficient' - it uses less manpower to reduce cost. All that need be done is for the cost of transporting to be less than the saving in manpower.
But yes, Andrew-T. If the overall cost is lower, i.e. the total number of pounds, dollars, euros etc, is less for a good or service, that's the most efficient. End of.
Cost or price is agnostic - it cares not whether the cost is hourly rate of pay or diesel,
or any other factored cost.
That's why we can afford out-of-season vegetables - it's cheaper to grow them in Kenya with no greenhouse heating/lighting costs & lower ambient wage costs then fly them here, than it is to incur the above costs/wages here.
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If the overall cost is lower, i.e. the total number of pounds, dollars, euros etc, is less for a good or service, that's the most efficient.
Sorry, woodbines, no (I am assuming you are not TiC here). Efficient does not mean the same as Economic or Economical. Efficient means achieving an end with least use of resources, which can be money, manpower, materials or time. The fact that bean-counters only know how to quantify beans is the fundamental problem.
Edited by Andrew-T on 01/12/2009 at 23:50
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It can be even less logical than many of the above, and the cause is customer demand.
My employer makes animal feedstuffs, mainly for ruminants. We have mills dotted all round the UK, and they are all sited pretty close to the main concentrations of dairy production ; the south west and north west. This keeps costs down both for us and the farmers, and ensures good supply lines.
One of these mills produces organic feedstuffs; you'll appreciate that for quality control reasons it has to be "stand-alone" since you can't make organic and non-organic in the same mill. Consequently, the organic feeds have to be tripped around the country, resulting in a lot of "empty mileage" which apart from adding to production costs goes against one of the basic tenets of organic farming, which is to reduce harm to the environment and reduce food miles.
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I think I wondered on here the other day where everyone on the motorways is going - on the major trunk routes it's surely too far for most to commute and they can't *all* be going to meetings?
I think someone should stand on top of the M62, stop everyone and re-allocate their job so they work on the same side of the Pennines as they live. Then the motorway would be largely deserted (apart from all those people going to meetings!).
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I often said that meetings should be held in a location approximately equidistant for all concerned, such as the Caribbean, but no-one listened :-(
JH
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I think someone should stand on top of the M62 stop everyone and re-allocate their job so they work on the same side of the Pennines as they live. Then the motorway would be largely deserted (apart from all those people going to meetings!).
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We dont all work I'll have you know, we pensioners have to get to airports to depart for places hot and sunny. :-)
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Yes Bill Payer, you made that comment on my thread!
They should do the same on the M1 (maybe at Watford Gap?) and on the M40 (Cherwell Valley?). Obviously it shouldn't be the same person as the one on the M62, logic dictates we should localise this position. : )
By the way, someone made a very pointed comment on my thread about me being daft for doing a 165 mile commute. I did answer that I had a room down South and that I sometimes come back to Cheshire at the weekend and sometimes not. In my case, and in the spirit of THIS thread, it is again simple economics for me. The kind of job I can do I cannot do (at the moment) "up north". I would LOVE to, trust me... and if anyone has any car-related marketingy/sales/PR jobs going with high-end cars/trucks/bikes then let me know, but it's worth it for me at the moment to travel once a week/fortnight and keep my house up there, as my other half loves her job and our house, and I don't want to settle down here. That's why I do my pointless travelling, and yes it does hack me off at times. Saying that, I have booked a train ticket on Saturday from Euston to Crewe: 7 quid! That's not bad is it? If it was that cheap all the time I would sell the car.
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