Murphy & Son Ltd as a significant supplier to the SIBA membership seek to advise that the current regulations for the carriage of hazardous goods has lead to the withdrawal by many national carriers in distributing these products. In effect this is due to the cost of training their personnel in the ARD regulations ( Carriage of Dangerous Goods Legislation ) provision of safety equipment and special storage criteria.

To improve our flexibility and service we as a Company are training more of our employees to cover for this legislation. The products it covers are all cleaning materials, preservatives and other products with acids in the formulations. In fact most orders we send out tend to include a qualifying product.

There are no opt outs and so everyone has to comply. Everyone involved in the delivery of these products is facing increased charges. We have sought advice and identified a few companies that will deliver these products, in all cases one container or a whole pallet load faces the same charge per delivery. Unfortunately the unit cost falls disproportionately on small orders.

As most of these products have long shelf lives we are encouraging customers to increase the order quantity of these goods to lower the unit cost of the associated carriage. We are also encouraging more collections to avoid the charges altogether. Here customers will still need to comply with the legislation which we will advise them of at the time.

We would welcome any members thoughts on this subject, these may be directed to our Transport Manager, Mick Ward. Please call on 0115 9785494 or email mick.ward@murphyandson.co.uk to discuss this and our options for collections from Nottingham or via our distributors.