£7000-a-year drivers by 1980?
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BRSL seminar hears about wage forecasts, rising distribution costs, Freightliner unreliability, possible bans on urban deliveries, the lack of automatic 0-licence renewal and the possibility that trucks will not exceed 38 tons
• Will lorry drivers be paid £7000 a year by 1980? The possibility that a figure between this and around £3000 a year would be the norm by then emerged during a discussion on future wage levels at a seminar—Transport in the '70s—held by British Road Services Ltd near Birmingham on Friday and attended by about 60 senior transport and distribution executives.
The first paper -The total distribution concept" was presented by Mr L. S. Payne. BRSL managing director, who said that the total cost of distribution as a proportion of the sale price to the customer ranged today between 15 per cent and 40 per cent. He showed diagrams which revealed that the cost proportion of the transport alone was about 5.5 per cent in the UK and 3.8 per cent in Germany and Switzerland, while the 6.4 per cent in the USA was a pointer to what happened in a country with really high demand for consumer goods. In the UK, said Mr Payne, the total distribution cost as a percentage of sales value was around 17 per cent compared with 13 in Germany and 22 in the USA.
It became ever more important, he said, that delivery dates were kept, otherwise the customer became dissatisfied no matter how good the product or how keenly priced.
At present, total distribution was too fragmented among different departments and the time had come for a unified view of physical distribution management (PDM), with conscious company policy covering all factors from raw material purchase to final customer delivery. Mr Payne thought that proper use of PDM could avoid the dangers which stemmed from changing one factor in a distribution system (eg the number of depots) in isolation, when the overall result could be worse than before.
Fast -rising costs Mr Payne summed up his view of some of the main future developments as follows:—
(1) The demand for quicker availability of goods would intensify.
(2) COSES would rise faster in distribution than in other areas. (3) Distribution would become more capital-intensive.
(4) The need for increased professionalism would necessitate the proper planning and training of labour resources.
The speaker felt that, regardless of EEC or other legislation, labour pressures would bring a demand for a maximum driving time of eight hours a day. The amount of work which could be completed in this time would be affected b■., the increase in traffic, and Mr Payne produced a graph showing a rise in car population in the UK from 5m in 1958 to about 14m today—and a forecast 20m by 1980.
EEC entry by the UK would, he said, increase the distance, and hence the time, of typical journeys and would thus increase the stocking costs for manufacturers.
The extra cost of distribution generally would be offset to some extent by higher-capacity vehicles and also by night deliveries. Slides depicting night and day scenes in typical urban streets provided a striking reminder of the contrast in traffic conditions. Mr Payne explained the three main BRSL systems for the Nightpac delivery of secure containers at retail premises.
Night deliveries also meant accurately timed deliveries, while the shop manager could get new stock on the shelves before an influx of customers, and supermarkets could reduce or eliminate the average staff of four or five normally engaged full-time on goods reception.
Mr Payne added that he was certain that some cities would soon start banning goods deliveries during the day.
Using the growing motorway network would offset rising distribution costs, but with shorter labour hours and more expensive machines, distribution management must make the most of every resource. He suggested: (1) Companies should adopt a PDM approach.
(2) They should appoint one executive to have complete overall control of distribution.
(3) They must define the exact market requirement—especially the real, and not imagined, customer demand for service.
(4) There must be an effective control system to see that distribution policy was implemented right down the line, and this should include stated standards of performance.
(5) Technological developments had to be constantly watched, to ensure that a company kept up to date.
(6) Companies must lay down manpower planning and training policies, and they must start their overall planning now.
Any reduced rates?
A delegate told Mr Payne that he was ready to recommend night distribution to his colleagues now, but there would be objections to the extra costs of, for example, extra staff to load vehicles. operate weighbridges and so on. Would BRSL offer reduced rates for night transport?
Mr Payne said he hoped extra staff would not be necessary if the secure-delivery system were used. Intensification of throughput, possible by using big vehicles for night deliveries, was hopefully a means of getting favourable rates. He was ready to discuss individual projects with any company.
Mr H. H. Eccles, general manager of Austin-Morris service division, thought that the current labour situation was a factor: however one might wish to speed deliveries, one had to safeguard the reliability of deliveries against disruption. Did Mr Payne think the labour situation was going to improve?
In general, replied Mr Payne, he did not. This was an international problem. But BRSL now put requirements and standards for big transport contracts to its men before accepting the work, making it clear that if they could not accept those standards then there was no point in BRSL taking the job.
A delegate with light but bulky traffic asked whether there was any likelihood of continued on page 41