A new business idea: take someone’s website for your own then ask them for the image files!!!

January 30, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Many of you may have read about how we came across a website that was basically a cut and paste from our website of all our imagery and web copy. Rather than take the website down, they have asked me to send me our original image files so that they do what they want – although they apparently ‘paid some Indian guy’ $500 for the website! The email was so funny that I thought I should post it here (I’ve taken out the email addresses and personal details though). Just in case you forgot, here’s a side by side of the real one (on the left) and the fake one (on the right).

 

  

 

If someone had sold me a fake website image for USD 500, I would have been fairly unimpressed and would have outed them, so I wonder if a new industry will get established for doing a “save website as” service – clearly quite lucrative as one of my guys said!

Anyway, sit back and enjoy the following for your reading pleasure!

 

Last Email From Them

On 24 January 2012 16:30, Websequel wrote:

Hello James,

The treating email that we are getting from you seems totally unreasonable. We are not okay providing the confidential detail about our company account to anyone outsiders. Please have a word with your employee who happened to sell us a copy of the website. Or if you can send us the full file we are ready to change the website banner (I’ve highlighted this as this is almost my favourite line). We contacted our lawyer with all the detail information we have done no wrong and we were not aware of the fact that it was your website copy, but still as a cooperation we did make few changes on the site, but you happened to misjudge the cooperation and you kept on threatening us in this regard.

If we have the complete file we will definitely change the website banner but since no PSD files were provided to us we cannot work on it. And we cannot pull the website down either as we paid $500 for this website.

We are willing to cooperate but we cannot as there is no detail information we can get for you.

I hope you would understand.

Regards,

Sukhjinder

 

From Me

Sent: Monday, January 23, 2012 6:53 PM

Subject: Re: Airport Super Shuttle Buffalo Contact Form Submission

Hello Sukhjinder and Dave,

As you will be aware from previous emails, I have asked for you to rectify this situation by this date of using intellectual property which is essentially stolen. I presume by your lack of response that you are not planning to co-operate. I would ask that you reconsider this position as I really don’t think that it is either of our best interests for this situation to not be properly resolved. Please respond to this email by 25 Jan US time, or else I will need to look at what action I need to take to deal with this matter.

Thank you for your co-operation with this matter.

Sincerely,

James

 

From Me

On 18 January 2012 01:40, James Swanston wrote:

 

Hello Sukhjinder and Dave,

I must say that I am slightly disappointed by your response. There are actually a few things you can do as follows:

1. Please forward email correspondence with the person whom you USD 500 for the template and details of what freelancing website you purchased it from. I am sure that given that USD 500 is quite a bit to pay for a template, you will be able to easily find the records, and also, am sure that you would hate for other people to be defrauded in this manner. Given that I am sure that you are as unhappy with them as I am given that they have basically sold you something that was stolen, I hope you will be very supportive of this. In your first email, you said that you would deal with them, so this shouldn’t be a massive request from you.

2. Additionally, you could very easily take down the website or replace it with something that has other images. You may be particularly concerned with local taxi law compliance in Toronto/ Niagara Falls/ Buffalo as there is no such thing as the Public Carriage Office in the United States or ‘Transport for Buffalo, Niagara Falls and Toronto which you allude to in your FAQ – which is again almost directly copied from our website – and which again highlights that you can change the text. For your information, the Public Carriage Office is part of Transport for London and based in the United Kingdom.

I am sure as a reputable business, and Dave with a LinkedIn profile which you visited me from, you surely don’t want to be involved in such a blatant copying of someone else’s hard work. With that in mind, I would again ask you to reconsider and address this matter in an appropriate fashion.

Many thanks in advance.

Sincerely,

James

 

From Them

On 17 January 2012 19:07, web Sequel  wrote:

Sorry James but there is nothing there we can do as of now. Please investigate within the designer team who designed and sold the theme.

 

From Me

Sent: Monday, January 16, 2012 8:56 AM 

Subject: Re: Airport Super Shuttle Buffalo Contact Form Submission

 

Hi Sukhjinder,

Thanks for your email. In the same way that Dave put images over the Heathrow Express and Gatwick Express logos, you can do the same for the main image files. We have invested a lot of time and effort in develop and building our brand profile and have trade mark protection in place.

It is not acceptable at all for our trademarked imagery and copyrighted materials to be blatantly used without our permission.

I would again ask that you look to immediately replace the imagery and other materials taken from our website, which surely you can do as a web design company, and have this achieved by 23 January.

Sincerely,

James

 

From them (I like how they ask for feedback on what they did)

On 16 January 2012 13:38, Web Sequel wrote:

 

hello james,

I was informed by my partner dave about the conversation you had with him regarding website. we bought this site from one of the freelancer in some freelancing website i don’t remember which one. he sold us the website in $500. while we bought the website we were told that he was from United Kingdom. There is nothing that we know more than that about the person. Regarding website we were not provided complete files of the website where we can make more changes.

we did not know that the website was copied, if we knew that the website was copied we would not have bought the website already. I am so sorry that we are not in a position to make changes on the website as we don’t have files. By the way out of curiosity did you do the website like we did?

Thanks,

Sukhjinder

 

From Me

On Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 6:14 PM, James Swanston wrote:

Dear Sukhjinder,

From Whois, I was able to get your email address as the registrant of aaashuttleny.com and also buffalosupershuttle.com. I am not certain whether you have seen the email chain below, however as you will not, these two websites are almost direct copies of our website, its imagery and web copy. As per my email below, I would ask that you immediately change the images and web copy that has been taken from our site, as well as provide the details of whomever provided you with this template.

Thank you for your assistance with this matter.

Sincerely,

James

From Me

Date: 9 January 2012 11:21

Dear Dave,

Thanks for your email

While I see that you have changed over the logos for Heathrow and Gatwick Express, the remaining imagery, which is trademarked is still there. Unfortunately we do have clients in North America and also do airport shuttles so it could easily be mistaken for us. In addition, as you can see from (I’ve taken out the two websites for client sites that I put in the original email), we built sites for our partners for which they pay us a considerable amount of money, so having something that fundamentally looks like our website is not appropriate. It is easy to change over graphics and the web copy that has been taken from our site, so I would ask that you do this immediately.

If you are willing, can you also provide the contact details of the person in the UK that you purchased the template from as we will need to find out what other sites this has been put up on.

Thank you for your co-operation with this.

Sincerely,

James

Response From Them

On 21 December 2011 13:43, web Sequel wrote:

Dear James,

This was a template we bought from a Indian guy in UK. We were charged $500 for this template. I can see website is same but since this is the template we cannot make further changes in it. Moreover the area we serve and you do is different in fact totally different country. As in regards to the logo I’ll make sure logo are changed by today. Thank you so much for informing us about the issue. We will deal with the Template provider.

Warm Regards,

Dave

 
Original Email From Me

 Sent: Wednesday, December 21, 2011 6:30 AM

Subject: Airport Super Shuttle Buffalo Contact Form Submission

A request form has been submitted on the website on 12/20/2011 18:45:20, following is the result of the submission.”

First Name: James Swanston
   
Comments Hello, I was recently directed to this website from Google Analytics. I am not sure if you are aware, however the majority of the graphics, a lot of the web copy and the logos are a direct copy of ours (please see www.carbonvoyage.com). Additionally, there are two logos on your front page for Heathrow and Gatwick Express. Am not completely certain whether you have developed this inhouse or used a third party contractor to develop this, however a number of these things are either trademarked or copyrighted. Sincerely, James
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Spot the Difference: Someone ‘borrowed’ our website design and all the images and logos!!!!

December 15, 2011 by 2 Comments

I saw some weird search terms on Google Analytics last night about taxi journeys and then saw that there were some incoming links coming from a taxi site in the United States – and there was my website staring me back from my computer screen.  Perhaps my business was growing so fast that I didn’t even know that we’d launched in the United States. Check it out here and here which then link to here at the bottom of the page. And just to confuse you all, here is our website.

Unfortunately, this was not quite the case! Most people we chat to think we have a really nice website – clearly whoever did this thought so also!!!! I realise that imitation is the sincerest (or highest) form of flattery, but blatantly copying our imagery and logo really takes things to a new level – I particularly like that whomever did it even left in the imagery for Heathrow Express and Gatwick Express on the front page and a lot of the web copy remains the same!

Spot the difference – the real one is on the right, or is it the left – errrrr

         

The web copy is almost the same and I like how they’ve kept in some quick facts on the right hand side – perhaps it could include quick tips about the best ways to ‘borrow’ someone else’s website! Again, the real one is on the top (or left)…

         

And I like what they’ve done with our logo also!

     The real one is on the left!  

 

It was funny to read some posts on this such as webleeddesign and airbag and I did feel particularly sorry for Lingo24 who had something similar happen to them.

Am sure the DCMA and WIPO say something about this kind of stuff – it really is a bit naughty.

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The Greenest Government Ever – maybe not…

November 8, 2011 by Leave a Comment

As a conservative voter and environmentalist, I was really delighted to hear David Cameron make this particular pledge around 18 months ago, which was a far cry from some of the unfortunate rantings back in Australia. The intervening months have seen some good and some bad things come from the government, as the Guardian nicely shows in their green-o-meter. Many people will realise that any environmental credentials and plaudits have been fairly well obliterated perhaps as highlighted by an open letter written by Solar Century. For a government that talks so much about big society, it has failed to look at the big picture. No one can question that these tariffs needed to come down; doing this so quickly will dramatically ruin the solar industry and be completely detrimental to efforts to reduce fuel poverty, and of course efforts to reduce the carbon impact of energy needs.

So why am I, who is involved in the transport industry, starting off this post talking about solar stuff you may ask. I think ultimately the key issue here is about government’s role in supporting efforts to reduce climate change, and particularly bringing in new technologies. Sustainable technology often needs government support to help pump prime industry as sometimes there is a very long return on investment period, and sometimes emerging technologies cost a lot to start with. When I was involved in the Suststainable Development Commission’s Mobility 2020 work, this was one of the key things we looked at where it was going to be critical for governments do major procurements to help bring down the cost of technology. From an economic perspective, this shouldn’t be about long term subsidies, but rather financial support that reduces over time, otherwise it is unsustainable (although certain industries do have long term subsidies that have particular political imperitives attached to them). I would highly doubt that other industries would accept a cut to subsidies within six weeks, particularly midway through a review period of subsidies. I do hope the government backtrack on this, but it will forwever tarnish any good work that they have done to date.

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A Night at Buckingham Palace

October 26, 2011 by 1 Comment

Running a startup can be a bit tough at times as any entrepreneur knows; but a number of us who are based in London recently received invitations to an event at Buckingham Palace, which is a pretty nice thing to get in the mail! The event was put on by the UKTI TechCity folk and was hosted by HRH Prince Andrew – Mike Butcher almost likened it to a dinner put on by President Obama for a bunch of major tech players in the US.

It was the latest in a number of things that I’d been to in the last month that were focused on the entrepreneurial world building up around Old Street Roundabout, including a round table discussion with Eric van der Kleij to discuss issues affecting startups. Not surprisingly, I mentioned public sector procurement and one or two other things – I think there is a lot that can happen here. I fully appreciate that startups come with particular risks, but risk aversion in the public sector is immensely expensive, and the kind of transformation that is needed to deliver cuts while retaining some element of government efficiency really needs to incorporate the innovation that can be delivered by enterprising startups. An amazing, but true example, is where a mate running a startup called Lucidica providing IT support in London is able to regularly source IT products for his clients for up to 40% less than major universities, who you would think had slightly more buying power – but clearly not!

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Startups Interviews: Carbon Voyage CEO James Swanston

September 27, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The following was an interview for the magazine Made in Shoreditch with …

James Swanston is the founder of Carbon Voyage, a startup dedicated to finding efficient transportation solutions. Prior to moving to the United Kingdom in 2007, James ran a number of small enterprises in Australia in the wine, property, and IT industries.

As well, James has served as an officer in the Australian and British Armies, including tours of duty in Malaysia, East Timor, Iraq, Falkland Islands and Afghanistan, and was awarded the United States Bronze Star Medal and the Australian Joint Operations Command Commendation for service in Iraq. James holds Bachelor degrees in Law, International Business and Modern Asian Studies, a diploma in Export Management and a Masters in International Relations and Asian Politics.

G: Tell us about your startup, Carbon Voyage

J: Transport is quite inefficient with lots of empty journeys and part loads, which creates unneeded costs, carbon, and congestion. We have built some software that can be used to book and manage transport journeys, and in doing so, find opportunities to share journeys and fill empty return loads. Over the last twelve months, we’ve been working with some fairly big organisations to build our credibility in the marketplace and also ensure that we’ve got our proposition and technology right.

G: What were the biggest obstacles in launching your company, and how did you overcome them?

J: Funding a new business is always a massive challenge. To date, we’ve been fairly fortunate to have been able to do this without any real external investment, although a point will come where we will need to consider this. As the business grows though, this challenge will remain, particularly in terms of managing cash flow.

G: What would you say has been your most memorable moment since launching Carbon Voyage?

J: I guess the most memorable thing is to see the technology when it has first been built. We’ve just finished building some new freight software that we’ve been working on for a very long time, and this is particularly exciting for us.

G: Can you give us a few ‘Do’s and Dont’s’ for setting up a new company?

DO

  • Get your product or service out there and iterate quickly based on customer feedback
  • Look at setting up strong partnerships
  • Keep fixed costs down as much as possible, and be careful about what you spend your money on

DON’T

  • Take your focus off sales and marketing
  • Let obstacles get in your way

G: Why did you choose Shoreditch in launching your startup?

J: Shoreditch is a pretty cool part of London, and it is great to have lots of other startups around you who relate to all the ups and downs of running a business and pursuing your dreams.

G: What does the ‘Silicon Roundabout’ have to do to compete with Silicon Valley?

J: We really need to ensure that the right talent can come to the UK and London to build great startups, and the Government could play an active role doing so.

G: Who/what are your favourite entrepreneurs/startups in Shoreditch?

J: I really like Moo and Tweetdeck, and there is also a great environmental business called AMEE. And of course, there are some great businesses in the Accelerator!

G: What does the future have in store for Shoreditch?

J: I hope it continues to draw in cool start-ups so that there is a vibrant community built up of start-ups form around the world. At the same time, I hope that it doesn’t completely lose the edgy, fun atmosphere that makes Shoreditch a special place.

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Sustainable Mobility: Use transport in more efficient ways saving both money and carbon

April 28, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Sustainable Mobility: Use transport in more efficient ways saving both money and carbon.

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Green Shoots can help – an article in the Municipal Journal

February 17, 2011 by Leave a Comment

This article was written in the Municipal Journal – please visit here to read it.

Pressure to lower costs can go hand in hand with initiatives to reduce the carbon footprint of local authorities, suggests James Swanston

The next few years will see a reduction in local authority budgets of more than one-quarter, together with similar targets for cutting carbon levels.

The fundamental challenge posed by the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) also presents an opportunity for the ‘other’ CSR – corporate and social responsibility to start providing solutions.

But, while corporate and social responsibility can be seen as a mechanism to produce an overall positive impact on society, including a cleaner environment, it can also be aligned with cost-saving measures, since the two go together – cost savings can lead to carbon reductions, while carbon savings and sustainability measures can result in cost reductions.

Transport is a significant element of all government expenditure, and cannot be excluded from spending cuts. And yet transport is a core element of many local services, including emergency services, education, health and welfare.

Sustainable transport strategies can help deliver massive financial savings through improved efficiency, with a minimal impact on underlying services, and savings in the region of 20% are not unrealistic. Local authorities can adapt a number of strategies to address this challenge, using existing technology, solutions and concepts which are already available.

In some respects, the financial spending cuts are not as significant as the legally-binding carbon reduction/management targets being set. Nationally, the UK is meant to reduce its transport-related carbon emissions from 135 to 111 MtCO2e by 2020.

Accurate reporting for Scope 1 and 3 Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions is a key component of this, and while more focused on central government at present, it will be quite enlightening to see how successful the recent Revenue and Customs 2010-11 dry run sustainability reporting is, given that public sector spending has not always been that transparent – a fact highlighted by the DCLG when it decided to ‘open the books’ in August 2010.

Ultimately, any new strategy will cost money to implement, whether it is about deploying new technology, training, education, communications, or incentives. However, sustainability-focused transport strategies can have very fast returns on investment.

Consider the case of taxi usage around Whitehall by six central government ministries, which costs around £10m a year – so the total central government cost is significantly more. Imagine if a strategy was implemented whereby all staff had to use public transport, with the exception of key personnel or those who shared, and a shuttle service was set up between key government locations. The cost savings could be immense.

Local authorities have an unenviable task of seeking immediate savings, with more needed in coming years, while not increasing council taxes. This, therefore, requires a rapidly-implemented plan incorporating efficiency, reduced services and new revenue streams.

Here are some generic ideas which may be of use. A key enabler for any idea is robust management information to make the right decisions – and often this is not available.

Fleet management

Greater fuel efficiency can be achieved through driver training in a very quick space of time, and some telematic devices can provide a more sophisticated solution to enable this, as well.

Another option is to use hybrid vehicles, but this is obviously a more expensive proposition in the short term, depending on funding arrangements, and also are less effective than highly-efficient diesel vehicles on highways.

Consideration should also be given to whether an organisation actually needs its own vehicles, or whether it could share a fleet with an adjoining local authority.

Alternatively, there may be some merit in seeing whether a fleet size needs to be maintained or whether there are car clubs/car hire schemes that could be used, enabling an authority to see off under-utilised fleet vehicles.

Car parking

Where councils operate their own parking facilities, consideration should be given to changing the tariff structure to something that is based on a vehicle’s carbon emissions, and incorporate special rates for car sharing.

Not only can this provide a new revenue stream, but would start to address carbon and air-quality issues by incorporating special rates for car sharing. It could also start to reduce the horrific rates of single car occupancy and congestion while, at the same time, free up car parking spaces that can then generate more revenue.

Incentivising staff in local authorities to walk, cycle or use public transport would have health benefits, and also help free up parking spaces for members of the public or local businesses.

Shared services

Given the 30-40% empty running/dead mileage rates in taxis and private hire vehicles, as well as road freight, collaboration between neighbouring local authorities could look to fill these empty vehicles for a discount.

Procurement processes should factor in opportunities to work with other organisations and, if an office is located in a business park, there are opportunities to have a shared taxi service or shuttle bus schemes.

Change is inevitable because of cost pressures, but it is still useful to understand some of the barriers that organisations and individuals need to address. Competition for scarce resources will become greater, inefficient procurement mechanisms need to be removed, employee terms and conditions may need to change, and organisational change must be fully supported from the top-down.

Staff will need to trust new strategies and have the right incentives and information in place to support change, and understand just how new approaches can help maintain key services and protect jobs. Harsh decisions may be needed to meet the current financial landscape, but there are also opportunities to create local services that are more sustainable in economic and environmental terms.

Those who support the need to address climate change should appreciate the need for urgent action, while those who are sceptical will hopefully discover just how neatly financial and environmental savings can go together.

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Collaborative Consumption

February 13, 2011 by 3 Comments

I went along to two events run by NESTA around the issue of collaborative consumption this week. There wasn’t a dedicated focus on sustainability, but it is clear that collaborative consumption is closely linked to sustainability. Both days were facilitated by Rachel Botsman, who wrote What’s Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption. It was really useful, particularly in allowing me to reflect on some of the behaviour related aspects of our business. There were some very cool stories of various things that were going on in this space, including Participle, the Good Gym and  Crashpadder (which I have now joined). I do sometimes wonder how financially sustainable some of these things are from a business perspective though, and there were actually very few ‘commercial’ entrepreneurs in the speaking lineup. Trust was the key thing I was interested in and there were some very useful comments made and critical mass came up as a key point by a number of speakers – both items important to us.

Here is an overview presentation of this by Rachel – if you want to see more of the event – check out here.

 

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Speech at the inaugural Heropreneurs Dinner

February 3, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Last night, I attended the inaugural dinner for Heropreneurs, a  new charity established to help service leavers start up their own businesses. It was attended by the Minister for Veterans Affairs and a range of ex-military people who are all very successful business people in their own right. The following is the text of the speech I delivered - I did not completely stick to script, but it is broadly the same in content and theme:

The Right Honourable Under Secretary of State, ladies and gentlemen, my name is James Swanston and I run Carbon Voyage, a start up and an investment for Heropreneurs.

I thought it would be useful to set the scene by providing some background to my business and then discussing those areas in which Heropreneurs and indeed government can add value.

Transport is responsible for almost a quarter of all carbon emissions. Most commercial road transport is empty 30% of the time and 84% of all commuter journeys in cars only have single occupants.

My business was set up to address this by making transport more efficient, cutting cost, carbon and congestion.

To do this, we built a software application that tries to make best use of transport – sharing vehicles, filling empty return journeys and finding the right mode of travel; we initially developed this around passenger travel and are now working on a freight version of our software which is already attracting significant interest in the UK and elsewhere.

We compliment this with an advisory service to help major organizations in developing and implementing strategies to manage transport needs.

I negotiated our first deal, a research collaboration with Tesco and the University of Manchester almost a year ago whilst on leave from Afghanistan, and key customers now include Aegis Group plc and more recently, a major public sector organisation; pending successful funding from the Technology Strategy Board later this month, the organisations we anticipate we will be working with will include a range of very large public and private sector organisations. Our research work with the University of Manchester continues and we are regularly approached to assist research efforts at other universities.

We are very positive about opportunities in the current economic climate as our service can help the government deliver services whilst meeting significant cost and carbon reduction targets with minimal upfront investment. However, this will require some new thinking in the government and a willingness for innovation – some of our models point to wastage of 20% and higher in the way transport is used across all levels of government and the MoD is certainly not exempt from this. In the experience of many innovative companies, government is poorly set up to support fresh thinking when it comes to new ways of doing business.

While this all paints a rather impressive picture, or at least we feel rather positive, it is not all plain sailing and this is where an organisation such as Heropreneurs can provide a great deal of value. Most of us have served in highly demanding war zones where our decisions, often made in a split second, are about life or death, so in some respects, the pressures of a start up do not quite compare. Our ‘do more with less’ lifestyle certainly translates very nicely into bootstrapping a start up, but help is still needed.

Mentoring is perhaps the most important thing – having links into experience can help entrepreneurs open doors and negotiate the obstacles and pitfalls of running a business. Links with big business are also key – via Heropreneurs, one FTSE 100 company is now investing money and time in supporting some of our efforts, and our link with them will only serve to add to our credibility as a new enterprise.

Support with business services – PR, legal, accounting – can take a massive amount of pressure off a start up and remove major costs from the early stages of the life of a business.

Access to funding for start ups, rather dear to my heart at the moment, is fundamentally broken at the moment, although I would be keen to note that funding should not be seen as an automatic right for anyone with a cunning plan. Tech businesses in particular do not require amounts that sit within the normal model of angel and venture investing; banks do not lend money and do their best to ignore enterprise finance initiatives. Ten or twenty thousand pounds can go an amazing distance in start ups these days, and in some respects, that is the kind of funding levels that are important – if I look at our business, the help that an amount such as that would provide to us would be amazing, particularly to help ease pressure on our working capital needs, but it is hardly a funding level that would excite most angel investors or VCs.

Trying to break into public sector procurement is somewhat akin to a sisyphean task; at minimum, it would be great for Heropreneurs to help start ups build partnerships with the right organisations to be competitive for bids – a need that we have right now as we look to compete for a major public sector organisation to manage their transport better – which we know we can do if we can jump through the procurement hurdles. Perhaps a more exciting idea though would be for Heropreneurs to work with the MoD to establish a suitable test bed or incubator for public sector opportunities – smart, entrepreneurial service leavers know exactly where the opportunities are to do things better, far more than defence civilians or the standard set of major consulting firms that cost a lot of money, and it would also enable some retention of the corporate knowledge that is exiting the uniformed services at alarming rates.

In closing, I would like to add my thanks to those of Peter’s for coming tonight. The space in which Heropreneurs exists links very well with the Government’s aspirations for big society as well as the continuing need to foster enterprise and innovation in the United Kingdom. It can also reinforce the very positive light in which those who serve in uniform are seen.

Effective mentoring, funding, business support, and assisting with public sector procurement opportunities are all fantastic ways for Heropreneurs to enable service leavers to excel in building new businesses.

I hope I have been able to plant some ideas about where you can support Heropreneurs; most service leavers are without the right networks and opportunities to achieve their potential, so having this mechanism to assist entrepreneurial service leavers is an aspiration worth of support.

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Beating the rise in fuel costs

January 1, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Ushering in the new year was not just a set of parties and festivities but also increases in public transport costs and fuel (via the fuel duty and the increase in VAT) – The Scotsman referred to it as New Year fuel duty rise leaves lorry drivers facing ‘a £95m hangover’ and The Independent also mentioned that the situation could get worse due to a potential spike in the price of oil – and the price of fuel has gone up 20% in the last two years as highlighted in this BBC article. In The Independent article, the Freight Transport Association was quoted as saying that these price rises would see lorry drivers paying an additional £1,200 per year in fuel costs. The Daily Mail suggests that motorists will need to pay an additional £255 per year to run their cars.

Obviously this is concerning for those who drive and those that provide transport services; however this also needs to be seen in the context of the massive inefficiencies across the transport sector. One of the terrible statistics is single occupancy in vehicles which averages 60% (and 84% for commuting) which is crazy. Price rises could be ‘combated’ by increasing charges to customers, which then just serves to compound the inflationary pressures created by the VAT and fuel duty increases. The better solution is to look at where efficiencies can be generated. Given the scale of inefficiencies within the industry (30-40% empty running/ dead mileage for taxis and road freight), the real answer is to address this which can happen very easily, whether it be driver training, more efficient fuel products or technology solutions that help better match up demand and supply, which is obviously at the core of what our technology does. Continued price rises will also start to change the equation around the cost-benefit of switching to hybrid technology and coupled with the announcement about subsidies to purchase electric vehicles will potentially see some interesting developments in this direction. This is of course accompanied by significant capital expenditure so really the short term solution and the easy wins are around driver training and technology.

I appreciate the concerns that motoring associations and industry commentators have, but the reality is that the transport industry is immensely inefficient and has a massive environmental impact – the way to deal with this is to seriously implement more sustainable ways of travelling and nothing else is good enough.

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