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Winter’s here! We now seem to be getting back to some sort of normality after the long Christmas holiday and, of course, that very bad weather we experienced during the early part of January. We seem to be doing quite well work-wise during this early part of the year, but it really is difficult to forecast business trends due to this period of unusually extreme weather conditions. Although bad weather can be good for our business, heavy snow also has the downside of making driving conditions particularly hazardous, especially on minor roads. Neither were they bad just in the suburbs either, on some days they could just as easily have been in the centre of town. As I stated earlier, although good for business, it does make life for members much more difficult, especially for the majority who no longer live in town but in the suburbs and even further afield. These are the people that really curse the bad weather, especially if they cannot even make it into town due to the heavy snowfall. They sit at home feeling extremely guilty about not going out to work, exacerbated by the fact that the credit card bills are beginning to come in following Christmas! They watch the news on television with its live reports from the centre of London, with traffic seemingly moving freely in the background, then they look out of their own window at eight inches of snow, tell themselves that it’s probably busy in town and begin to wonder if they should try and get into work? I know the feeling well, as I’ve experienced it myself in the past. Anyway, getting back to the work; our figures have not significantly improved this year (as compared to last year’s figures) after our first quarter’s trading, however, I do believe that we have hit the bottom and am hopeful that business will begin to improve. But as I explained earlier, such inclement weather in our business makes it difficult to predict future trends. However, I am very pleased to |
 report that we are showing a small surplus for the corresponding period, this is due to the fact that our operating costs have been cut quite significantly over the same period last year and not due to any significant increase in work. Interesting letters |
a member who complains that work from the
‘House’ is all A/D, so how can he get a job home? In reality, we made that
account A/D because local trips were ‘sticking’ in the system and we were
getting complaints from the client. Consequently, had we had left the trips
with destinations, yes, some members would have got a job home in the short
term, but in the longer term they would not as we would have lost the
account! Everyone would then suffer from the loss and absolutely no one
would receive any type of trip from that particular account again. As a
consequence, every member - and the Society itself - would be the loser in
that long term. There is one last point that I would like to address. I believe some members believe we make huge amounts from clients in administration charges, that in turn make our charges particularly expensive compared with the competition. That is a total myth, as in a vast number of cases the admin charge is exceeded by the amount of driver gratuity alone. Whilst I am on the subject of driver gratuity - and you should not read anything into this - one of our competitors has reduced their gratuity to the driver to 5%, that is not to say they have necessarily reduced the charge to the client, it is just a way of increasing their income from the driver.
DaC AGM Brian Rice |
