To All,

I’ve been looking into the possibility of forming a buying group for domestic oil. I’ve deliberately not restricted this to ‘Buckden’ although I don’t suggest we get involved ordering for the whole Dale!

A ‘standard’ 4-wheel delivery truck has a capacity of 10,000 litres, so taking a whole tanker at a time is the obvious place to start.

Richard Lamdin at Clifford House Farm and I have done some ‘phoning around for 3,000 Litres and the prices (+ VAT) per litre were as follows;

September 14:

56p         Carrs Billington

55.5p     Northern Energy

54.98p Total Butler

56.5p     Townson

56.3        Tate

56.88p   Bayford

September 16:

            57p          Carrs Billington

56.2p      Northern Energy

57p         Total Butler

57.5p      Townson

56.95p   Tate

56.88p    Bayford

VAT is currently 5% and would have to be added to these prices. 

Please remember, these are prices for delivery TODAY. My order is for next Thursday so the price is likely to have changed by then. 

In VERY broad terms, some of these companies were not really interested in improving their offer in return for increased volume and single deliveries, others were.

Again, in VERY broad terms those that were interested could show up to 5% discount for a full tanker.

As part of the process I’ve obtained brief details of what offer would be available from each company. If you are interested in getting involved I’m happy to let you have these.

My own feeling is that we need to order on an ‘as needed’ basis (not ‘top-ups’) with one point of contact at this end. Plenty of notice would be needed in order to get a tanker together, check prices etc.  but once delivered we’d receive individual bills from the oil company and make our own payment arrangements.

If you are interested please let know by email (if possible) kevin@beckcottage.com  Could you also please let me have a rough estimate of how much you usually order and when?  It would also be useful to have any specific delivery criteria ie ‘restricted access, so it needs to be a small tanker’  or ‘the tank is a long way from hard standing so the pipe needs to be 200 foot long’ or whatever.

Regards, Kevin.