TA to press weights and spares issues
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• Election of a new Government has encouraged the Transport Association to plan new approaches on several issues. At its meeting in London on Tuesday, the TA discussed an approach to the new Minister of Technology to seek help in improving the spares situation for heavy goods vehicles, and a submission to the new Chancellor of the Exchequer to ask that vehicle excise tax should be based on plated gross weights and not unladen weight. The latter suggestion, which has been raised before by the TA, would eliminate much tedious and costly vehicle weighing.
There was also keen discussion of the problem of overloading occasioned by the critical axle weight limits on fully laden 16-ton-gvw vehicles. It was felt that, unless manufacturers were prepared to uprate axle
weights to give a loading tolerance, customers would have to be told that these vehicles would in future be regarded as having a gross limit of 15 tons, with a consequent higher tonnage rate for the reduced payload.
The new chairman, Mr David McVeigh, told his audience at the lunch following the meeting that the haulage industry now needed publicity for the fact that many drivers were earning £2000 a year; the whole career aspect had altered, and young people should know of it.
With Mr McVeigh's election as chairman on Tuesday, Mr A. Nokes of Grantham Road Services became senior vice-chairman and Mr J. Stone of G. B. Hicks Ltd, London, was elected the new vice-chairman.