'If you're no' make up du 5etter off we'll lifference'
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By John Darker, num
46MRY it for a month. Keep a record of 1. your hours, and if you're not better off we'll make up the difference." With this very fair challenge, Mr. Fred Baker, director of T. Baker and Sons (Transport) Ltd., Dudley, persuaded a group of his drivers to try their luck with a productivity scheme devised in collaboration with the United Road Transport Union.
Previous articles in this series have described established productivity schemes. Smoothly working incentive schemes are not conjured up slickly overnight. From whatever source the original ideas come it is the responsibility of management to introduce a viable scheme to drivers and others affected, and to win their co-operation.
Industrial attitudes created in past years and still kept alive by mutual distrust can be markedly changed in the context of a single firm, but this is bound to take time. It was felt to be appropriate, therefore, to look at a productivity scheme over a period of months.
Mr. Baker had started with the conviction that it was essential for the road haulage industry to get away from the "11-hour complex." "Drivers," he told me, "have been brought up to learn all the dodges to maximize their earnings under the traditional long working week. To achieve a decent week's wages they will congregate to chat at our expense."
He had been receptive when a URTU organizer had explained his union's refreshingly realistic attitude to productivity made possible by motorways and modern large capacity vehicles, and he determined to start a pilot scheme for the artic drivers on the company's regular services between the Midlands and London.
When I met Mr. Baker, in the autumn, the scheme had been running for some weeks. "Taking it all round," Mr. Baker told me, "I reckon the artic men are 25 per cent more productive than they were. Our inducements, which may involve the payment of up to 19 hours' pay for 11 hours' —or less—work, have succeeded in getting the drivers back with loads from London in time—in most cases—to reload their vehicles the same day. Moreover, they could often go home after a stint of much less than the traditional 11 hours. But habits die hard. The drivers are still very reluctant to go home early!"
Trial scheme
The introduction of the pilot productivity scheme at Bakers coincided with the retirement of the firm's traffic manager. Fred Baker was acting in this capacity, temporarily, when we talked, and it was very evident that he had done the job before. The mixed fleet of 45 vehicles on general haulage and contract work was, he conceded, keeping him cheerfully busy.
"I've had to drum up plenty of traffic to keep the drivers fully employed," he declared. "With this kind of scheme it is essential that the drivers have more than enough work to go at. If traffic falls off to nothing, men who have hurried back for a late afternoon pick-up feel they have been let down; they are very conscious of the bonus earnings they will lose."
Under the pilot scheme drivers were allotted specific running times for defined journeys and anyone bettering their allowed time—which was based on generally accepted scheduled running speeds in the trade —benefited proportionately.
As an example, Mr. Baker told me that in the past it had seldom been possible for drivers to deliver a load from Dudley to London and to collect a full load from the docks and return it to Birmingham in one day. "We now find that by paying 14 or 15 hours for the job, men can load 16 tons of butter or flour, in London and get back to Dudley comfortably within legal hours. The profitability of vehicles has been much enhanced as a result."
After a six-week trial period the productivity scheme was felt to have proved itself. "Have any drivers tried to abuse its provisions since you established the arrangements?" I enquired. Mr. Baker handed me a "notice to drivers" on the new pay system from which I quote:—
"When this system was introduced with selected drivers and vehicles it did bring about a considerable increase in productivity, and vehicles were getting empty in London early and in Midlands when coming back from London.
"The whole idea of this scheme is that vehicles shall do more and drivers thereby earn more money. The position now is that with very few exceptions very little more work is being done for greatly increased pay, and unless there is a considerable improvement we shall revert to hour work payment at the end of this month.
"We therefore list matters we want corrected:—
"(I) This is a piecework system and drivers cannot switch to hour work if they find they are having a bad day on piecework. Bad days have got to be balanced by good days.
"(2) Time to offload, in excess of time allowed, has grown to ridiculous proportions and we are now in the farcical position that if drivers can get tipped in less than time allowed they gain, but if it exceeds this they do not care how long it takes, and we have proof that in some cases where a driver knows that it is too late to reload he has deliberately taken his time and claimed excess off-loading time.
"In future, excess time will only be paid in exceptional circumstances and if this scheme continues, forms will be issued to drivers on which customers will have to insert time of arrival and departure and sign and give reason for delay before excess time will be paid.
"In notoriously bad delivery points, i.e.
and and certain docks, it is up to drivers to get there early and when there do everything possible to get offloaded quickly."
London operations
It is clear from this strongly worded notice that Fred Baker was extremely annoyed, and disappointed, with the behaviour of certain drivers. I am glad to report, after an interval • of two months, that the salutary warning bore fruit. The scheme is working smoothly. At the London end of the trunk run I saw for myself how smoothly Baker's widely experienced London manager turns round the vehicles.
Mr. H. G. Clifford has had a lifetime of experience of road transport, both nationalized and private enterprise, and I was not long in his company before realizing what a wide range of information such veteran traffic men carry at their fingertips. I am always fascinated to hear a good traffic man brief a driver in dockland, and I can vouch for the accuracy with which Mr. Clifford directed me to the Victoria Docks, on another occasion. from COMMERCIAL MOTOR'S office near Farringdon Road.
Mr. Clifford arranges all the back loads for Baker vehicles delivering in London and he is helped by three regular shunters who deliver loads in the London area and reload the trailers for the Birmingham-based drivers. "In II years", he told me, "I have only sent one vehicle empty to Binningham —and that was last week. It was because customers were waiting for the import levy to be removed.
"Our shunters get a loading bonus. Drivers loading 140 lb. bags of flour, for example, get Is. per ton for loading. One of my chaps has loaded 48 tons in a day before now; there's no doubt he earned his corn".
I saw a Baker artic loading flour at Joseph Rank's Premier Mill, Victoria Docks. Flour bags slide down an overhead shute, and this minimizes the physical effort required of drivers; hut the bags have to be neatly stacked on vehicle platforms by hand. Not a very easy job on a hot summer day! Perhaps, one day, this sort of operation will be done entirely mechanically. In comparison with any one of a thousand automated industrial techniques, automatic loading of standardized bagged traffic on lorry platforms would appear to be an absurdly simple problem. Meanwhile, the drivers of the growing number of flour-tanker vehicles must surely be envied by their bag-humping colleagues.
Incentives
Peter O'Neill, one of Baker's shunters, told me he had driven for the company for about a year and he liked the job. The bonus scheme, he thought, was fair. "You can see yourself earning that bit more—it's definitely an incentive". Peter told me that 16 tons of flour could be loaded in half an hour or so "depending on how you feel". Sheeting and roping time was additional. As regards loading delays, Peter said there was an element of luck about this: "Today, after getting rid of a load of tubes at London Bridge I came straight in and began to load immediately. Sometimes, if we get here too early in the morning, the flour is not made and we have a long wait in the queue".
One other example of the Baker approach to productivity deserves mention. Drivers on contract work for a large customer are paid on the basis of 4s. 6d. a pound on vehicle earnings, subject to a guaranteed minimum payment of 20 per week. This scheme, too, I learned, was working very satisfactorily. The drivers did not know the actual rates paid by the customer and Mr. Biker stressed that without complete confidence in the integrity of the firm, and its office staff, such a scheme might meet difficulties.
I must confess that the simplicity of the plan appeals greatly to me; many other road hauliers, I feel, could usefully look at this form of remuneration, though the actual percentage of vehicle earnings paid would need to be reviewed periodically.