We have lost a couple of jobs on price recently. Traditionally, that was the operator down the road being £50 or so cheaper. In the great scheme of things, it did not matter. But that is not the case this time. There are fewer operators around, and pretty much any I talk to are getting top rates.
What has happened is that school trips are too expensive and simply are not going ahead. No coach operator here is doing them. That is far worse than losing those jobs on price; in that case, you can get them back next year by sharpening your proverbial pencil. If schools get into the habit of not going on trips, that could be a different proposition altogether.
A couple of schools have asked me to reduce the price of hires, which is something I do not like doing and rarely accept. The price is the price, and we are still fortunate that someone else will take the booking anyway if it doesn’t go ahead with us.
What does annoy me is that it always seems to be the coach operator that is expected to take a bath on rates. I asked one teacher if the venue they were going to was giving a discount. If it was, I would have happily matched it. Obviously that approach had never crossed her mind, and she did not seem at all keen to pursue it.
I put that to the back of my mind, but then a local community group said that we were too expensive for a short two-hour job the following Saturday. I told them to find someone cheaper, but they could not.
The pandemic reset made drivers reevaluate their lives. Many do not want to work weekends, and certainly not for three hours’ pay. We now guarantee eight hours at overtime rate for any jobs done on a Saturday or Sunday.
A two-hour hire for the customer with less than 50 miles’ travelling suddenly does not make sense. Too expensive for them, and not worthwhile for us.
Even if I discount it, I need to make a profit, and you have burned a driver’s day for not much return. The job does not go ahead. Trying to explain that is incredibly tricky, especially to older people who often cannot appreciate the cost of doing things in today’s climate.
Despite the above, we are incredibly busy. I have no doubt that any cancellations will be replaced, often with even more lucrative jobs. Short notice always attracts a premium. However, I wonder whether we as an industry need to be wary of killing the golden goose that laid the golden egg.
Often now, an operator is pricing not against local competitors, but against a risk of the job not going ahead. It is something I haven’t seen before and may not again. The current rates cannot last forever.
A balance between getting a really good price and a lucrative day’s work or coming across like Dick Turpin is a tricky one to strike. But there is no doubt that as an industry, we have had worse problems.
