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15,000 Vehicles Enough for Small Men: Disposal Delayed Three Months
Page 57
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at the specific request of 20 persons. In fact, only seven of those 20 people submitted tenders and of these, four were rejected, and three were still undecided.
In Lists 1 to R2, 4,261 vehicles had been offered or once re-offered in " vehicle-only " units and 3,201 of them had been sold. In units with premises, 7,928 vehicles had been put up once or twice and, of these, 1,278 had been sold. Thus, 4,479 vehicles out of a total of 12,184 offered have been sold.
Put Back Three Months Because it was necessary to provide with each of the premises a sufficient number of vehicles to constitute an economic unit, vehicles in units with premises formed a high proportion of the total offered. "The comparative failure of this kind of unit to sell has, in our opinion, put back the progress of disposal by some three months," said the Board.
The report denied that any reserve price had been placed on assets. The Board had refused to tie themselves to any rigid set of rules for determining whether a particular tender was reasonable or not. They had decided each case on the best evidence available. In doing so, they had always paid the closest attention to the evidence provided by the tendering. There had been few cases where, although the tenders were genuinely competitive, the highest had not been accepted.
Dealing with the disposal of units of 50 or more vehicles, the report said: "Our present view is that the sale of shares by private negotiation cannot, under the statutory rules for its use, become common, and will probably be Limited to cases where only one possible purchaser is in the field. We also think :hat large blocks of vehicles can often lc offered as units with equally good .esults and greater speed than by formng a company in order to sell the shares ty public tender."
Big Units Coming After June 5, the formation of tedium and large units and companies tr disposal should proceed rapidly. he Commission and the Board had !ready agreed provisionally on most of te decisions necessary.
Part of the report dealt with special affics, contract hire vehicles and the trcels system. It stated that about 260 ,rniture vans were available for dismal and about two-thirds of them had :en employed by B.R.S. on the cartge of new furniture and were mainly ncentrated at High Wycombe and mdon. There had been requests for 0 vehicles, but some prospective yers were bound to be disappointed,
particularly in the provinces where about 200 vehicles had been asked for and only 94 were available. List 6 would complete the offers of furniture vans.
The demand for tankers also far exceeded the supply. Some 140 vehicles were required by prospective buyers, but only 59 were available. They were based in London, Manchester, Hull and Liverpool, and were to be offered in small units.
Buyers for about 60 heavy haulage vehicles seemed to exist compared with 170 vehicles available for sale. All these would be offered in small units.
There was a conflict of demand for meat vehicles, for some bids had been received for the whole of the B.R.S. fleet of 530 vehicles chartered to the Meat Transport Organisation, Ltd., and others for parts of that fleet. The Commission, with the Board's approval, had opened discussions with those interested in the chartered meat vehicles. [Among those who want to buy the whole fleet are M.T.O.L.] The Board had given much thought to the best method of disposing of the parcels network and had decided that. whatever form it took, the services now given to the public must be preserved. The problem was not merely to devise a method but to find purchasers for whatever companies or other groups of vehicles might be offered.
Discussions on Parcels Network
So far, there were possible tenderers for either small units or the whole network, but nothing in between. Although no decision would be reached until after June 5—the latest date for conveying purchasers' wishes to the Commission and the Board—the B.T.C. had opened discussions with all those who had so far made inquiries. The result was that some had dropped out, but others continued to be interested.
An inquiry had been made for the purchase in one lot of 231 contract-hire vehicles incorporated in a group of six contracts. The customers were willing to assign their contracts and negotiations were in progress.
The Commission owned some 2,900 contract-hire vehicles and proposed to sell about 2,600. Before offering the units, and " after explaining the position under the Act, and confirming that the Commission would continue to fulfil the terms of their contract, they inquired whether the customer had any objection to the vehicles on contract to him being offered for tender as a transport unit and, if they were so sold, to the contract passing to the purchaser if he proved acceptable to the customer."
Customers agreed to assign contracts in respect of 626 vehicles which were being offered as units in Lists 4 to 7. In List 4 tenders for 26 units were accepted, but in a number of cases [14] the customer had since said that he was not prepared to transfer the contract to the successful tenderer.
" The first testing of the market for such units has been disappointing," said the Board, "but we think it would be unwise to form a firm conclusion until the results of List 5 are known."
In Scotland the Commission had about 3,550 vehicles and would retain 425. There were about 2,650 general haulage vehicles for disposal, half of which would be offered in small units in Lists 1 to 7. On the evidence available, these 1,300 vehicles should be sufficient to meet the requirements of the small man, but, if necessary, more small units would be made available. About 475 of the vehicles for sale were furniture vans, tankers, machinery carriers, meat vehicles, parcels vans and contract-hire vehicles.
Scottish Plans Assuming that about 1,350 vehicles would remain after the small-man demand had been catered for, the Board had tentatively planned to offer them in medium-sized units or companies. Some of these would be fairly small, some would contain 40 to 50 vehicles and others from 50 to, say, 150 vehicles. "The intention would be that these units, together with the vehicles to be retained by the Commission, would be able to serve the whole of Scotland," said the Board.
The parcels vehicles in Scotland would be divided into two categories. Some were now operated as part of general haulage units and this practice would continue. Subject, however, to demands by possible purchasers, the Board proposed that the four main parcels depots in Scotland—in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen— should remain in the network covering England as well as Scotland, and be included in whatever arrangements were made for the network as a whole.
The report included five tables analysing units according to size and area, and giving other useful data.