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ommercial
Page 29
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otor VOLUME 129 No 3326 June 13 1969
There are still far too few professional transport men in local government circles. For a field which normally sets great store by the right qualifications for the job, there seems a surprising readiness to allow department heads fully qualified in their own particular branch to run sizeable numbers of vehicles with little experience of and no training for vehicle operation. It is too easily assumed that running vehicles is a sideline demanding little expertise.
If the foregoing remarks strike a familiar note, it is because they are an exact reproduction of editorial comments published in CM on June 2 1967. They are still as valid today, since so little has changed. But the situation will have to change rapidly in the coming months, because a new factor has entered the argument: the 1968 Transport Act.
Not only will local authorities be classified as businesses for the purpose of operators' licensing, but they will later require to designate transport managers to carry the responsibility of seeing that their vehicles are operated to a standard and in a manner which conforms with the Act's requirements. Those men must understand transport.
Even before the appointment of licensed managers becomes legally necessary, authorities will be obliged to conform with the standards of operators' licensing. so in their own interests they must examine the requirements thoroughly. The inescapable conclusion will be that transport must be put in the hands of a professional. a decision that will in many cases make centralization of transport a natural result.
Already the screw is tightening. Last week we reported that a local authority had had two tippers suspended from its licence as a punishment for running vehicles in bad condition. This is only a small foretaste of what the new legislation will bring. Time is running out for authorities with the amateur approach.
Behind the veil
The director of the Freight Transport Association recently complained of the ignorance and confusion which surrounded the concept of licensed transport managers. Our postbag confirms this assessment, and we suggest that the main reason for this situation is the extraordinary air of secrecy with which the tranport managers' licence committee has surrounded its deliberations. Press statements have been rare, and not very informative, and committee members have been sworn to a secrecy more appropriate to the meetings of a national defence committee.
Some of the bodies represented on the committee have consulted their membership on the proposals, but the industry at large, in order to learn what is going on, has had to rely mainly on papers presented by the TML committee chairman to individual trade associations. On a subject affecting the future of so many people in transport, a more open forum would not only have been more suitable but would have avoided much of the -ignorance and confusion".
A report in CM this week may help to dispel some of the fog, but a full, frank statement from the committee would do so more effectively.