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£7000-a-year drivers

continued from page 22

quotations other than by tonnage rate from hauliers. Mr Payne said that most BRSL traffic these days was capacity traffic, rather than weight-limited. Where possible, vehicles were tailored to suit bulky, light loads, but operating cost varied little.

"Distribution in the consumer field" was the title of a paper presented by Mr W. G. Kite, traffic manager of Petfoods Ltd.

A first essential in distribution was to establish the service standard required, and this could be difficult because salesmen saw it as a fluctuating requirement. In pet foods, delivery was generally expected one week from the date of order; it could be made a 24-hour service but this would be too costly. However, there had to be some flexibility to meet different customers' needs. Petfoods Ltd reckoned the minimum economic delivery to be 2ewt, and below this the retailer had to go to a wholesaler for his goods.

Warehouses abandoned Petfoods had used a regional depot system to get the goods close to the customer but service had been found erratic, the warehouses expensive to run and production had to be kept high to stock them all. The company had also had to instal a post-billing system, with customers ordering direct from the depot, since ordering from the factory and then filling orders from the depots took too long.

The company investigated direct delivery and found that all the main urban concentrations were within 125 miles of its Melton Mowbray factory. It had therefore closed its depots and set up a single distribution store at the factory. No vehicles were operated by the company itself; every consignment over 2 tons became a general haulage job, using 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 and 15 tons as the basis for rates. To get the standards of service, the manufacturer had to work closely with the haulier, he said. Petfoods handed its hauliers a daily list of tonnages and destinations for the next 24 hours and left the carriers to work out the load combinations.

The result had been an economic and efficient system, coping with the production of a factory which used four shills to produce for 24 hours a day seven days a week. This not only maximized the use of

capital equipment but enabled hauliers to load their vehicles day or night—and to pass some of their cost savings back to the shipper. Mr Kite emphasized how important it was for industrial transport and traffic managers to get to know the haulage people.

The most difficult part of distribution was the retail end. This had been undertaken direct from the factory and sometimes meant a man and his vehicle being away for three or four days. Five years ago Petfoods found urban deliveries taking too long and so had developed shuttle services.

Quick returns On a typical shuttle, a night man took two loaded vehicles to Birmingham, where two drivers started early each day on local delivery rounds. This system had cut costs by LI a ton and meant the quick return of delivery notes for checking. These shuttle services had now been extended as far afield as Tyneside, 180 miles away. Mr Kite saw this as a major future system for smalls distribution—even possibly to Scotland, using three drivers, including two night trunkers changing over half-way.

Not only did the system cut costs but it kept close control on distribution and standards of service, even though it was all in the hands of hauliers, who worked on contract-hire time-and-mileage terms. Mr Kite was adamant: if a manufacturer could get a better return on capital by running his own vehicles then he should be in transport and not in manufacturing.

For really long deliveries, Mr Kite told a questioner, to Belfast and parts of Scotland, Petfoods Ltd transhipped loads into the depots of local hauliers for distribution.

Two loads a day Mr • Kite believed firmly that individual vehicle deliveries might soon be banned in city centres, and that authorities would demand delivery into specified urban warehouses for the consolidation of loads to particular shops in each separate sector of a city on specified days of the week. He thought this would bring the benefits of guaranteed-day deliveries and reduced costs, because it should be possible to get two loads a day out of a single vehicle.

He thought Freightliners had promised a means of speeding deliveries at economic cost, for example a 10ft container replacing a van on Petfoods shuttle service, but actual experience had been very disappointing. Melton Mowbray was 25 miles from the nearest Freightliner depot, whose locally available services were not particularly suitable in any case, but on at least 12 occasions in the past year disputes at the Freightliner terminals, or train breakdowns, had meant failure to meet planned schedules. Unless Freightliners could improve their service standard, he saw little future interest, in them for regular distribution.

Turning to Europe, Mr Kite said that pilferage had been costing the equivalent of 22/25s a ton on freight rates, but containerization had eliminated this. With the regularity of shipping services, he foresaw an extension of the company's shuttle service into Europe by using

containers. He had been told by RACE that jumbo jets would bring air freight rates tumbling down, but he thought it would take about 10 years to reach a keenly competitive level. Then, he thought, we might see container shuttle services even to Australia.

Empty running Mr A. H. Brook of Michelin asked whether the overnight shuttle vehicles returned empty. Mr Kite said they did, but even with this empty running the cost per ton was lower than with other systems. For example, he was delivering from factory to Birmingham customers for 105s /ton, using 7-tonners. It was only by using an area-by-area and vehicle-by-vehicle costing system (which took only half of one girl's time) that the true economies had been thrown up.

Mr Kite thought the present general driver wages system based on vehicle payload was "crazy". The work of a retail delivery driver was harder and more complicated than that of, for instance, a heavy night Minket% Petfoods Ltd paid the hauliers' drivers a daily bonus of 7s 6d, clearly identified as a Petfoods payment, to service all customers' reasonable needs. In his company's case, he added, the best vehicle for five-days-a-week delivery was the 7-to mien Mr Kite warned of too-ready acceptance of consultants' schemes. He had, for example, been advised that use of a haulier's general services for 1-ton lots would be cheaper than putting these with the small consignments on the shuttle services and although he had pointed out the severe disadvantages, an experiment on these lines was run. It was abandoned after three weeks, by which time there had been five complaints by the police and half a dozen from shopkeepers about big vehicles standing outside their premises—and it had also cost more.

Mr Payne commented that one or the strongest objections to night deliveries came from manufacturers who used their own drivers to push extra sales on the spot. He revealed that BRSL was nevertheless working on big night delivery schemes with two national compardei, but these Might take a year or two to mature.

Mr A. G Jones, commercial services manager, Mars Ltd, agreed with Mr Kite that shuttle services were better than local depots. Mars had reduced its own depots from 23 to 3.

You tak' the high road To cover the high dead-heading of really long trunk runs, said Mr Jones, they had used Freightliners. The South Wales service had worked extremely well but on the Glasgow run they had lost one day's service in four through depot disputes, train failures and wrongly routed containers. This had cost Mars £15,000 since the beginning of the year. They had now removed half of their Glasgow traffic from Freightliners and were making plans to remove the rest. Despite all this, he still believed it was a good concept.

Mr Payne said that on some services Freightliners had been bedevilled by new crane failures at depots—"the most diabolical run of unreliability". He would not like to see shippers turning away from the Freightliner concept because of these—it was hoped temporary—problems with equipment.

A delegate asked Mr Kite the vehicle operating cost on the factory-to-shop delivery, and he said that with the 7-tonners stationed in Manchester this was averaging about 2s 9d a mile over about 1200 miles a week, but this figure included two drivers and their bonuses. Maintenance costs had proved very low because there was so little cold running, and no standing overnight, and the vehicles ran economically for five years.

He said he would like to see a combination of night delivery and the prescribed urban warehouse system, which could lower costs considerably.

Complaining of the frequently bad access to retail premises, Mr Kite said that one customer bought in 20-ton lots, yet delivery was restricted to 7-ton vans. Even new towns were not providing proper unloading access. The industrial transport manager was seldom consulted on matters in which he was a professional—even by his own company.

Paying for delay Mr. H. H. Eccles (BLMC) raised the question of waiting time and said that his company was thinking of starting a system of differential discounts to dealers, with better rates for those customers whose premises could take the economically large delivery vehicles; there might also be a deterrent charge on those who detained vehicles unreasonably.

Mr F. B. Ellis, transport manager of GKN Sankey Ltd, confirming bad experience of the Glasgow Freightliner service, said that one problem was in obtaining proof of delivery. Who would provide p.o.d. on night deliveries? Mr Payne replied that locked containers would travel from manufacturer or warehouse to be opened by the shop manager, so there would be no question of drivers getting signatures. Mr Jones (Mars) said that despite three checks on every delivery they still encountered many claims for

non-delivery, which were only resolved by producing the signed delivery note. Even if shop managers opened the sealed containers themselves, some of them were exposed to a "bunce" system, using the excuse of short deliveries to cover up for shop losses and stock shortfalls. This was not an easy problem to solve. Even with pre-arranged deliveries on pallets, there had been claims for short delivery (but never allowances for over-delivery!).

No whipping boy Opening an address on transport legislation, Mr kin Sherriff, deputy editor of Commercial Motor, said he thought it would be a great pity if the lack of a statutory transport manager's licence allowed the industry to slip back into some of its old ways. But the TML had never been necessary in providing a whipping boy, because the 1968 Act provided a sufficient spur through the threat of the removal of an operator's licence for failure to comply with the safety requirements.

There had earlier been talk of professionalism, and Mr Sherriff drew some rueful laughter and applause when he remarked: "But surely none of you are professionals, otherwise you would not have needed this big book (waving the Transport Act) to put you back on the right lines".

He suggested that now that hauliers and own-account operators were all regarded identically under the 1968 Act, the "C" men should look at ways of interworking to save costs. They would certainly all have to go into the traffic courts to justify retaining a licence. There would, he said, be no "renewal" of 0 licences. It was clear that when current licences expired, their replacement would be regarded as involving new applications and applicants would therefore face the possibility of objections. He advised operators to look out for an MoT inspection between now and the end of the licence's currency period. An inspection, he suggested, not only of facilities but also of the "arrangements" for looking after vehicles, as the Act stated.

Giving the example of 22 cases dealt with under Section 69 by the West Midlands LA (CM last week) Mr Sherriff said own-account operators must fully realize that they faced this prospect of having to justify their statements of intent. Many operators—own-account among them —could be off the road at the end of five years, he warned.

Not only management and engineering staff were involved in "fitness" under 0 licensing. Operators should ask whether their clerical staff were "fit" to examine drivers' records effectively. Did the drivers know how to complete their records? Did the traffic planners know how to route vehicles to keep drivers within their permitted hours? Even national manufacturing companies applying for 0 licences were being questioned about the financial provisions made for their transport side.

The challenge to own-account Men, said Mr Sherrill, was to decide now whether they would become real professionals in transport, with all the ramifications; or to hire-in vehicles only as needed, which was Lot very satisfactory because one could iltcounter difficulty in obtaining vehicles; or vhether to turn over to contract hire by ransport contractors.

A delegate, saying that his company was nescapably forced to run its own transport, tsked how he could overcome the refusal of us board to become interested or involved n the major responsibilities of running ransport. Mr Sherriff suggested that one way, which had certainly been successful in case he knew, was to clip from CM the eports of licence curtailments, revocations md so on and send copies to all the nembers of the board—until eventually the ransport manager was asked along to ;xplain what was involved.

He realized this was a difficult problem Or many transport managers, and it could ;illy be overcome by persistence.

rhe big earner

Mr J. D. Mather, BRSL's executive Erector, staff, presented a paper on man ower planning in the transport industry, aying that BRSL was already planning for he changes in wages, social conditions and abour availability that would inevitably ncur.

The future cost of wages could, he ;uggested, be estimated by working on past ;xperience. For example, DEP figures for he transport labour cost per man (including ;rages, national insurance, SET and so on) were £1005 in 1964 and £1305 in 1968. Forecasting on the basis of 30 per cent over bur years being a continued rate of ncrease, one came up with £1695 in 1972, E2200 in 1976 and £2860 in 1980.

Using BRSL figures, based on wages of 117 per week in 1960, Mr Mather said this would give a figure of about £45 per week )3r 1980,. roughly corresponding with these )EP figures. But a recent DEP study had ;uggested that the rate of increase could well steepen to around 15 per cent per umuin. On this basis, £1505 as a 1969 base

would become £2290 by 1972, £4000 by [976 and £7000 by 19801 Mr Mather believxl the truth would lie somewhere between the WO sets of forecast figures.

Mr Mather said he would like to see the Road Haulage Wages Council swept away.

Its very existence was inflationary because it perpetuated falsely low basic rates, enabling the unions to make big claims—which were applied not only to the employees with genuinely low wages but were added, in whole or part, to the wages of those who were already paid well over the odds. It was, he said, the employers who needed a council to protect them these days.

The TGWU, in the person of Mr Harry Urwin had, he said, made it clear that it wanted a bigger share of the cake for its members, whether or not the cake grew any larger. The union was also aiming at getting factory hours and conditions in road transport, and wage rates probably approximating to those in the motor industry.

No wages war for drivers

Mr Mather warned, that the growing shortage of skilled drivers would tempt employers to pay over the odds for labour; BRSL had decided to resist this temptation and instead was trying to increase the pool of drivers by training. It hoped that other employers would do likewise, to avoid a pointless wage war.

It had to be faced, said Mr Mather, that even today road haulage worked longer hours than any other industry. In 1969 average hours worked by haulage employees were 58, and the average remuneration was 109d per hour, which was tenth from bottom of the industrial league. BRSL was keen to get the hours down gradually, rather than waiting for a sudden legal obligation.

How much should one pay, say, a top international truck driver?. asked Mr Mather. By modern standards of job evaluation he rated very highly, and one had seriously to consider the value that one should realistically place on such skills.

The speaker agreed with Mr Kite on the need to break down the present basis of paying drivers' wages by vehicle capacity, agreeing also that the local delivery man had a tougher job than the trunker. The problem was to find an acceptable alternative pay system. The industry must also get away from payment by the hour, said Mr Mather, and BRSL had started to break away by putting its bonus scheme on a different basis. The company hoped to move through payment by trip or by job—on measured day work—into the fully salaried status which might possibly be achieved by 1980.

Employers must also start to programme and control the valuable time of drivers as accurately as vehicle performance and work capability was forecast. To recover the increasing capital cost of vehicles and equipment, employers would be seeking to introduce shift work and staggered hours; the main problem was that these were still socially unacceptable in many quarters. BRSL was trying two-shift working and night-shifting, especially on maintenance.

The speaker foresaw the virtual elimination of tramping, because fewer men these days were prepared to be away from home overnight, and BRSL was reducing the need where possible. He also believed that one result would be strong pressure for night subsistence pay to "go sky-high". In concert with the unions, BRSL was trying to promote better overnight accommodation and was talking with finance companies and caterers to see what could be done, but it was not easy to discover what was really wanted.

Discussing the new Government's industrial relations proposals, Mr Mather said they were certainly not an attack on the trade unions, and would have some very onerous effects for employers. The proposed new laws would mean compulsory consultation procedure, probably compul sory recognition of unions, and total union membership under "agency shop" plans if 20 per cent of the workpeople voted for it. Arbitrary dismissal of a employee could bring a fine of up to £4000.

He was very worried that the proposed industrial courts, while having advantages in themselves, would bring a host of industrial lawyers to make the whole business complicated and slow.

Mr Mather revealed that BRSL had a problem of over-age staff, notably among drivers and junior clerical staff. There was a big staff recruitment and training problem to be faced. BRSL needed about 2750 drivers a year, which meant that the company needed 250 training places for drivers.

He foresaw a crisis in skilled maintenance staff availability unless there was an intensive training programme. Too few apprentices were coming along—the security of a trade skill was no longer valued and it apparently no longer conferred status. It had certainly not brought commensurate rewards.

Social pressures on design

Introducing the next speaker, Mr Payne said it was BRSL's desire to encourage the creation of a British vehicle able to compare with the best anywhere in the world. The speaker being introduced was Mr R. A. Fryars, divisional chief engineer of British Leyland's truck and bus division, whose subject was "Transport technology in the 1970s".

Remarking that legislation had had a bigger effect on British vehicle design than any other factor, Mr Fryars explained that the legislators had to have identifiable reasons for their legislation, and one of the most important was social pressure. The general picture of the heavy truck today was of something noisy, dirty, smelly, dangerous and visually intrusive. On this reckoning neither manufacturer nor operator was matching up to social demands.

The truck was about the most lethal object that an out-of-control car was likely to meet on the road, said Mr Fryars. So one factor in designing future trucks would certainly lie in making them less formidable objects. He thought there would be legislation—he hoped to agreed international standards--di the introduction of such things as underrun bumpers.

Ironically, if the search for safety led to over-complication, this itself could bring dangers, thought Mr Fryars. To get safety with reliability, it was up to engineers and manufacturers to use their influence to keep legislation within reasonable bounds.

Although a current problem was the traffic-delaying effect of truck performance. especially in acceleration, it had been found that few car drivers used their performance to the full, so some of the very high truck performance requirements which had been suggested would not in fact be necessary in achieving a fair rate of traffic movement. Mr Fryars forecast that power-to-weight legislation would call for 6 bhp/ton initially, but he warned that this would probably be installed net bhp, and bigger engines would be needed for a given gross weight in many cases.

There was, he said, worldwide pressure to reduce diesel exhaust smoke, and the main incidence of smoke was the result of commercial practice—"turning the wick up". De-rating of some engines was very likely, said Mr Fryars, because legislation would probably call for smoke levels to be met on vehicles in use, and not only on the test bed. The British Government was very keen on this European proposal. which would for the first time link on-the-road smoke performance to installed power standards and test-bed smoke figures. He thought smoke enforcement would soon increase in Britain.

Trucks had been getting noisier, said the speaker, because engines had been getting bigger and because combustion designs for greater efficiency had tended to produce more decibels. To crack the noise nut was going to be the most difficult of problems and would cost the manufacturing industry millions in research and design and in production changes. But it was essential to work towards quieter engines, without going back to the disadvantages of indirectcombustion systems. Night deliveries, too, would increase the demand for quieter vehicles, and Mr Fryars thought that in the interim the industry might have to use smaller and less economic vehicles to overcome this problem. The UK legal noise levels were at present tougher than those in France or Germany, for example.

Better cab design Mr Fryars was adamant that road transport could expect demands for even better driving conditions in the cab. In some parts of the world the relatively high cost of vehicles had persuaded operators to become very selective in choosing drivers. In turn, the drivers had become choosey about the vehicles they were prepared to drive, and if this happened extensively in Britain, then some vehicles in use today would not find drivers, said Mr Fryars, After showing slides of the Swedish cab crash test, the speaker showed one of the newer European cab strength test, in which a heavy, flat metal plate is allowed to swing down to collide with the front face of the cab. Mr Fryars said that both tests were felt to be unrealistic in representing typical traffic accidents. Investigation had shown that the knee and leg levels were the most vulnerable for truck drivers, and design would have to take account of this. There would certainly be legislation for cab design to protect drivers—but there would be a penalty in price and unladen weight.

Mr Fryars believed that the delay in a decision on new legal gross weights reflected the general public concern that heavier vehicles would be even bigger, noisier, smellier—and more dangerous. He thought that higher legal weights might not be readily agreed until manufacturers could demonstrate clearly that heavier vehicles would be none of these things.

Another factor was that even with the 32-tonners there had been worrying results which had not been entirely foreseen—for example high-built vehicles, and especially big tankers, which were more prone to roll over than their predecessors had been. With a further increase in gross weight, but little or no increase in the base dimensions, the tendency was going to be for vehicles to grow upwards in order to achieve a bigger cube. This was a particularly difficult area in which to get solutions, partly because there was no single design point. It involved chassis makers, trailer manufacturers, bodybuilders and equipment suppliers. The manufacturing industry would have to get together on this.

And while the case for higher gross weights for container purposes was strong, said the speaker, it was not so convincing for other types of traffic. Was it perhaps conceivable that legislation could limit any new maximum gross limit to container carrying?

No more than 38?

Mr Fryars' personal view was that the new limit, if conceded, was not likely to be more than 38 tons. With 44 tons, the individual axle loadings were critical. On the other hand, the case for the drawbar trailer looked so promising as an alternative that. if something like 56 tons were allowed, there would be a sudden upset in vehicle demand and a tremendous problem for manufacturers.

Turning to gas turbines, Mr Fryars said that British Leyland had reckoned that double-drive was necessary for the g.t. tractive unit for reasons of tyre life as well as traction, even if the 44 tons for which it was designed did not materialize.

The 350 bhp turbine was, he felt, at the starting point for the really high-powered truck, and the turbine had a bigger development potential than the diesel,

especially if the eventual 8 bhp and 10 bhp /ton limits were introduced. Another factor was pollution. The Americans tackling smog problems were not putting in an attack on nitrogen oxides, and while the diesel was not a bad producer of oxides, the turbine was much better on this as well as on other aspects of exhaust emission. It was also compact, reliable and durable, said Mr Fryars. In recent years British vehicles had not been scoring too well on reliability; there had been too much chopping and changing. The new design emphasis must be on reliability—plus durability for the heavies.

Commenting that unit replacement had gone a bit flat after its initial popularity, Mr Fryars thought it was picking up again now and he believed there would be a growing demand for factory units. BLMC also foresaw a need for new or better manufacturer facilities at strategic points around the country to undertake the efficient replacement of units.

A delegate asked why LP gas had not been adopted more widely, since it reduced pollution. Mr Fryars said that there had only been small-scale interest in LPG in Britain; there were still exhaust pollutions with gas fuel, but they were simply invisible. This did not mean that they would necessarily escape unnoticed in exhaust checks. The USA had used LPG quite widely some years ago; Chicago buses ran on gas for some years, but this had now been abandoned. Mr Fryars said he did not know the level of accident risk with pressurized fuel tanks.

A delegate, saying that the present spare parts situation for virtually all makes was diabolical, asked what provision was being made for spares for future vehicles.

Mr Fryars said that British Leyland had decided to segregate the whole spares chain from the production side. The result had been some big improvements in availability. notably in epicyclic gearbox parts (up from 83 per cent to 94 per cent availability) and in gearboxes for AEC and Guy. BathgatE truck spares had improved, though tilt situation was still not as good as it shot& be. He explained that as recently as 1961 British Leyland was not far short of itf target of 95/97 per cent availability for fasi moving spares and 90/91 per cent for slow movers. But in the past two years th( regrouping of industry, the effects o Government legislation and, especially it recent months, the labour situation in tit( manufacturing industry, had led to deterioration. The peak demand for spare seemed to coincide with the peak demari( for vehicles, leading to difficult managemen decisions about which to build first. H. hoped that the new segregation would avoi( this situation in future.

Mr H. H. Eccles (BLMC) said that fo Bathgate trucks, now Redline, one probler had been the refusal of some dealers t, carry the necessary spares stocks. Britis Leyland was putting pressure on franchis holders to remedy "this intolerabl situation", It was also putting in a syster whereby a spares order reaching Cowley b 3 pm could be delivered to any specifie( UK address by 10 am the next day.