Transport at 25
One of Beat The Street’s luxurious tour buses
But in the early-1990s, accountants started coming out on tour and certain jokes suddenly weren’t funny anymore. Another decade later, as recorded music revenues dived and touring money became even more important, things were so serious that few could even remember why they had ever laughed at such shenanigans. “In the last 25 years, the real changes have come,” says Mark Guterres, director of Transam Trucking, which operates Europe’s largest music trucking fleet and recently swallowed EST, the pioneering rock & roll trucking company. “I used to work in my teens as a roadie, and that was very much seat-of-the-pants. You used to get a rental Avis truck and charge off; you might have insurance on it or you might not. Health and safety had never been heard of, and crew meals certainly hadn’t. It was real bandit country then. “25 years ago, that’s when you started to see the influx of some order, because this was the time money really started to come into the touring industry. Clients were earning large amounts and it was in their interests to work at a much more professional level. That’s when we started to have all the health and safety issues, which, being in transport, have always been fairly strictly governed,” says Guterres. That has never applied more so than now, as waves of regulations have fanned out across Europe under EU law, from tachometer-governed driving hours – no more than nine hours a day or 56 hours a week, with a 45-minute rest every four-and-a-half hours – to emission zones and all manner of city taxes.
didn’t care about tachometers, “ We and if you made a mistake it
Red Tape
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couple of years ago, Beat The Street founder Jörg Philipp memorably observed that “90% of stuff we did when we first started [in 1991], if we did it now they would shoot us. Driving hours, insurance things – nobody cared about anything then. We didn’t care about tachometers, and if you made a mistake it would be a €100 fine. These days, they execute you by the side of the road.” Regulations have a way of only getting tighter, and today Philipp confirms that this is very much the case, though he is content that it is all for the best. “It became much safer,” he says. “The regulations got a bit tighter a few years ago, but we are not suffering from it, because we know now how to handle it: more drivers, double drivers, even triple drivers. We always have to see the positive side, and in the early days, with one driver on a bus, it was always hard to train new drivers – you had to throw them in the deep end sometimes. Now, you take keen, young drivers, use them as double drivers for a few years and they pick up all the experience they need.” Ironically, while traditional grumbles about European integration focus on excessive standardisation, there are those who would welcome a little more, particularly where ad-hoc penalties are concerned. “You find in some countries that it is a local currency generator scheme,” says David Steinberg, owner of trucking company Stardes. “If you don’t have a particular piece of paper, you are looking at a fine of a couple of thousand Euros in some places, and you’re not going anywhere until it’s paid.
52 | IQ Magazine November 2012
would be a €100 fine. These days, they execute you by the side of the road.
- Jörg Philipp, Beat The Street
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They know that your job is likely to be time-sensitive, and they have got you by the short and curlies.” In general, however, Europe is a calmer and more predictable region than it was decades ago. Guterres remembers European jaunts when the itinerary might change from day to day. “You would be doing a tour where, just as you were loading out of Hamburg, someone would say, ‘oh, by the way, you are not going to Frankfurt for Tuesday, you are going to Hanover for tomorrow’, and that would be the new route.”
Mapping The World
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he advent of digital on-board systems, the strict drivers’ hours and the vastly increased complexity of touring productions themselves means itineraries are now minutely plotted and submitted by trucking companies along with the original quote for the tour. Such detail becomes all the more important given the expanding touring map, which