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PROBLEMS OF THE HAULIER AND CARRIER.

16th October 1928
Page 28
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Page 28, 16th October 1928 — PROBLEMS OF THE HAULIER AND CARRIER.
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

Dealing with the Ever-recurring Question as to the Meaning of the Term Ton-mile.

THERE are some things which seem doomed to be misunderstood, and one of them is the ton-mile, in -its relation to the problems of the haulier and carrier. Time and again the question crops up in correspondence. It is not merely that readers write and ask me what it means; that would not be a matter for comment, for there must be many to whom the term is obscure. If it were merely that every now and then readers wrote asking that question, I should not deem the matter worthy of open discussion in these columns. The. problem is not, however, so simple as that. The fact is that I frequently get letters of inquiry from hauliers asking me how they should set about ascertaMing the cost per ton-mile of operating a given type of lorry; or what they should quote for the carriage of goods on a lorry of a stated capacity, the quotation to be per ton-mile.

In nearly every case i gather, from the tone of the letter, that the writer is quite wrong-in putting his query in that form. He does not really want to know how much it costs to run his lorry per ton-mile, or how much he should charge per ton-mile, but how much it will cost him to carry a ton for a mile and what he should charge for carrying a ton over that distance.

Who wants a Quotation per Ton-mile ?

I should think that a request for a quotation for a haulage contract based directly on ton-mileage must be very rare. Even if one were brought to my notice I should be surprised if I did not find, on investigation, that the request had been put in error, due most likely to the fact that the man who wanted the quotation was himself unaware of the real meaning of the term or its proper application.

Haulage contracts are usually very simple affairs, Involving the use of a lorry for a given number of miles per day, week, or month as the case may be. Given a knowledge of the running cost of the vehicle per mile, the standing charges, overhead costs and the mileage to be covered per week, the calculation of the total cost is a matter of simple straightforward arithmetic. Add to that figure the amount of profit which is desired, and the price to be charged is found automatically. The item " ton-mileage " does not appear at all.

Let me, before going on to explain what is really B44 meant by ton-mile, take a few examples of haulage work as I have dealt with them for readers. I can thus show how independent we are of the ton-mile in quoting for such work.

The first to come to hand is from a reader who owns a -1-ton lorry, with which he is thinking of running a daily carrying service between two important towns in the Midlands. His intention is to carry miscellaneous packages from one town to the other and he wants to know how he should arrive at the proper amounts to charge. Now, my answer to him was that, since his mileage would be 400 per week, on the basis of one trip each way per day, the total costof operating the vehicle would be E9 2s. per week. His overhead charges would be about £1 a week, mostly spent in advertising and in paying commissions to agents in each town. I assumed that he would want to make a profit of at least_£4 a week, so that his revenue must be £9 2s., plus £1, plus £4, or £14 2s. per week In all.

To earn that sum, he runs 12 journeys (six each way), so that the income per journey must average at least £1 3s. 6d. The rest of my reply to that enquirer dealt with the method of assessing charges for assorted parcels and does not concern us at the moment, although I may return to it again. The point I am making just now is that the item ton-mile does not appear in the calculations at all, and that none of this haulier's customers would be interested in a price per ton-mile.

Carrying Paper to Fleet Street.

Another inquiry—all these are taken at random from my files—is from a man who is offered a contract to bring paper from a place some 20 miles outside London into Fleet Street. He is going to carry full loads of 6 tons at a time, and his quotation must be per ton of paper for the full distance. Here the method of arriving at the proper price is to ascertain the total cost of running the 6-ton lorry out and home, to add a proportionate profit, and thus to obtain a figure for the charge per 6-ton load. Divide by six and the answer is the price per ton. Again, the entire absence of any need for reference to the ton-mile is notable.

The next inquiry is from a firm desiring to cart

compressed gas cylinders. The daily load is anything up to 20 tons. Clearly, in this case, full loads are available for the vehicles both out and home, and this problem is the simplest of all. Again, there is no need to consider ton-mileage.

Then there is one from a man who wants to cart potatoes; 10 tons a day is his probable load. All he wants to know is the cost per mile, reckoning 30 miles per day.'

Another letter in the same batch is from a haulier who is discussing prices generally. This communication is of especial interest as it is .from a firm of much experience. It is to be expected, therefore, as would be agreed after perusal of the letter, that if there were any need to consider the ton-mile there would be some reference to it. The writer is pointing out to me that prices in his district compare unfavourably with rates which I have been recommending. Here it is a case of contracting for road material for given distances. In all quotations the price is given per ton for the distance named: For example, one contract concerns the haulage of road metal over a distance of 33 miles. The price quoted is 6s. ed. per ton. That is the usual method of quoting for haulage of such goods : a price is asked per fen over a stated mileage.

Another popular method of contracting is to offer the use of the lorry, complete with driver, all supplies, maintenance and soon, at a quoted figure per week. There is clearly no need to consider the cost per tonmile in that case.

" Middle-distance" Work.

Then there is another kind of work, referred to in the letter of inquiry as " middle-distance " work. This haulier has evidently been in the habit of carrying goods for a firm for distances up to 30 or 40 miles. Now they offer him this "middle-distance" work, which -consists of journeys of not less than 80 to 100 miles. They offer him 6d. per mile for each load on hls 25-cwt. lorry. They make no reference to the tonmileage ; obviously no such reference is needed.

Then there is what is popularly known as "council work." A typical example of an inquiry of this nature involves the use of a 4-ton lorry on the haulage of miscellhneous materials for the council. Here, again, the quotation would necessarily be per day, certainly not per ton-mile.

Perhaps the most difficult problem to be met in haulage, at any rate so far as assessing costs and charges is concerned, is that type of which the following is an example.

"We haVe a job offered to us to cart tarmac in 2-ton and 4-ton one-man tipping wagons, the loading to be from a chute. We are asked to quote on tonnage, from a mile to 10 miles radius." The inquiry to me was, of course, how to quote and what would be profitable rates. Even, however, in a difficult problem of this kind, With wide variations in mileage, and using two sizes of vehicle, there was no suggestion that a quotation per ton-mile would be acceptable to the concern inviting the tender. They wanted a price per ton. If there was a case where it might have been worth while to calculate in ton-miles, this was it; but neither -my correspondents nor myself were given that option. However, I will rett.rn to this particular problem again a little later to see if it may be solved more easily by reference to ton-mileage than otherwise.

Example of an Inquiry about Ton-miles.

Curiously enough, the very next inquiry on my files is one in which the term ton-mile figures. It is one, too, which illustrates my contention that the inquirer who uses the term does not, as a rule, understand it.

He tells me in his letter that he has just purchased a couple of Morris tonners, for which he paid £110 each; they were second-hand, of course. He is paying his drilvers £2 5s. a week, Uses a gallon of petrol every 15 miles and a gallon of all every week-250 miles. He wants what he calls a "basic rate" for charges assessed per day and per ton-mile. He does mention the fact that his average load will be 25 cwt.

Now I told him that his "basic rate " would have to be 112"a week, "reckoning on 250 miles per week, that the total operating cost of the lorry would be nearly 7d. a mile, or just over 17 a week, ECI that if he received £12 a week, he would have £5 gross profit, that is, 1,5 for his tiro& and establishment charges together. I told him that I could not give him any figures for the cost or charge per ton-mile unless I knew more 'accurately what his actual loads were, how they varied from day to day, or even from mile to mile, and for what percentage of its time the vehicle ran empty. Next week I will explain why that information is needed, how I would use it to obtain the information and how useless it would be when obtained. S.T.R.

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Locations: London

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