WHY MORE?
Page 85
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EVERY indication points to a recommendation next week from the rates committee of the Road Haulage Association for a substantial increase in road haulage rates. The amount may be as much as 10 per cent. Departing from the usual practice, there may also be recommendations for extra payments. to cover certain types of operation. Since the last increase in 1957, wages have risen probably far more than any other item of costs and operators with a high wages bill, such as express carriers, may find that even a rates increase of 10 per cent. will not be enough if and when effect is given to the new wage scales now in the proposal stage (The Commercial Motor, last week). Other operators whose costs per ton have risen steeply are those whose vehicles spend a good deal of their time in congested areas. There may also be a case here for charging a little over the odds.
Operators may put out of their minds any fear that British Road Services will take advantage of the position and announce that their charges will remain the same or will rise by an amount somewhat less than the hauliers will seek to impose. Increased costs have hit all operators alike, nationalized and independent If the price war extends even to surcharges, trade and industry may fail to realize how serious the situation is. British Road Services are well aware of this. On the facts before them, they are unlikely to arrive at a conclusion materially different from the one the hauliers will reach.
What will be the reaction of the customer? His first impulse will be to reject the request for an increased rate. He will see it merely asanother unpleasant factor in a situation that has been making him uneasy for some weeks. or months past. Other prices he has to meet are going up —more especially his wages bill. In many industries demand seems to be slackening and the battle for exports becomes ever harder. The small amount that the increase in road haulage charges will add to the price of the finished article may seem the last straw, in more ways than one.
Not Trader's Right Cheap transport has been available to the trader for so long that he has come to look upon it as his right. Circumstances have for the most part encouraged him. The varying warfare on the question . of nationalization and denationalization made it politic for hauliers to declare that they were increasing efficiency and reducing rates. The claim may have seemed iniPossible, but for a number of years it was not far from the truth. In their early years, it must now be admitted, B.R.S. put up the charges and failed to give• a service as good as that reviously available. , The return ' to free enterprise, oupled with the ;improved. performance of vehicles and mproved techniques of operation, made it seem for a
hile that service would get better and rates go on umbling indefinitely.
Even during that period there were qualms among auliers, including B.R.S. But while road transport was he centre of a political struggle the rates question was ardly likely to receive a fair hearing. The very language n which an increase in rates was occasionally announced • as calculated to soften the blow, so that it usually made o impression at all. B.R.S., in particular, invariably poilt most of the effect of an increase by referring to it y some such euphemism as "an adjustment." The auliers were a little more definite in their choice of words, ut they announced their wishes in such a still, small voice that the trader might be excused for declaring he had not heard it.
Disposal of a large part of B,R.S., with an apparently beneficial effect on the remainder, came; to an end a long time ago. The improvement that it made in service and in rates has now been completely absorbed. Efficiency continues to increase throughout the industry, but it is no longer so significant. The effect is more and more becoming neutralized by the growing congestion and by the 'additional restrictions that are largely the result of that congestion. The haulier is in trouble, perhaps more so than ever before, and if assistance is not forthcoming the standard of service he has given in the past may begin to decline.. The trader whose first automatic response is that at the present juncture he cannot afford to pay more for his haulage must also consider whether he can afford to have an inferior service.
There are many signs of the way in which the wind is blowing. One good example is the response the haulier almost invariably gives to an inquiry about his business. He will complain of the shortage of good driyers. There may still be plentyof men available at the basic, rates of pay, but the man who is worth more is a luxury that fewer and fewer hauliers can afford.
Rates Still Falling
Another complaint almost as common is that rates are too low and, for some traffics, are still falling. It is not enough to reply that the haulier has the remedy in his own hands and should refuse to carry goods at rates he considers insufficient. The haulier makes his living by keeping his vehicles running, and more often than not he seems helpless against the trader who is determined to get his goods carried at a low rate, If the haulier refuses, the trader is always able to find somebody else. It may be a clearing house of the kind that adopts questionable practices and is not above passing the work to a pseudohaulier without a licence.
Fortunately, most traders are not as ruthless or as short-sighted as this. There is in operation, however, a kind of Gresham's Law by which the bad rate drives out the good. This is seen, at its worst in the process by which a rate originally quoted as an'. exception for a return load becomes the normal price. For some traffics there seems to.be almost a conspiracy to help the man who expects to get his goods carried for next to nothing. The most notorious examples are to be found on certain civil engineering projects—including ironically the building of new roads—where finance companies have appeared to adopt the guise of benevolent institutions and unauthorized operation has been legalized with indecent haste.
The trader may well ponder over some of the things that are happening in the road haulage industry before he makes his decision on whether or not to pay a higher rate. He knows the advantages of keeping that industry in good heart. It has a key role in the country's transport and its importance will increase with what seems to be the inevitable decline of the railways. An improved service may be expected, and ultimately a more economic service when the traffic problems are solved by the provision of an adequate road system. The road haulage industry may not be able to reap the full benefit if in the meantime it is starved of finance and able young people are discouraged from entering transport. Higher rates now may be the means of ensuring lower rates in a few years' time.