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Double challenge to transport, CM Conference told
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• An audience of nearly 400 at Commercial Motor's Fleet Management Conference in Manchester yesterday heard the president of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, Mr. Douglas Richards, warn that privately owned road transport was facing a double challenge. The challenge to fleet management as a whole, he said, was that of raising standards in terms of safety, economic efficiency and conditions of work. But private enterprise also laced a challenge in struggling against the conditions and attitudes of mind which could offset the advantages of flexible free enterprise, perhaps to a crucial degree. And he added: "This could be elimination by induced circumstances rather than, as some 20 years ago, sudden death by legislation of a different nature."
Mr. Richards was performing the official opening of the Conference, whose theme this year was "The challenge of change". He believed there was a growing feeling that, in many areas in our way of life in the past few years, better heed could have been paid to the advice of Lord Falkland many years ago when he said: "When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change."
In his opening remarks Mr. Richards said it was becoming more and more difficult to distinguish between the businessman and the civil servant, and events in the freight transport world had been bewildering for the man in the street. There was certainly a growing lack of definition between the businessman and the civil servant; and it had been suggested that this was the day of the professional manager to whom it was immaterial whether he was employed in:".ttbe private or public sector. Commented Mr. Richards: 'A great deal depends upon what one means by a professional manager." Since the pressures upon a man in the private enterprise sector were greater, so too must the quality of the resulting manage
ment be better.
In facing a double challenge, the industry was not merely running a race to see whether the private sector could beat the public one. The national economic importance of efficient roads and efficient transport could not be overstressed, and the motor industry, and indeed British commerce and industry as a whole, felt that more rapid construction and improvement of roads was an urgent necessity. It was little use making things efficiently if they could not be delivered efficiently to the buyer.
There was a challenge to the transport industry to make improvements quite apart from those which would be forced by legislation. To stay in business; to overcome, or at least continue to outflank, the opposition; to guarantee their position as free enterprise carriers of the goods and people of this country, was largely a challenge to increase efficiency—and to do so rapidly.
Little would be achieved, said Mr. Richards, by arguments about the rights or wrongs of current legislation, which would do no more than feed the fires of those "who would perhaps happily see us out of business altogether".
A fear of change was something the industry could not afford. "The choice is not ours. These changes are to be; and many are to be welcomed. The changes through legislation will, I agree, make life for the professional fleet manager, in the short term, a harassing experience. Road transport may, again in the short term, become more expensive and the fleet manager's problems will be mammoth. But the strong, the keen and able, and the most responsible, will find themselves even better fitted to maintain their industry's role in the nation's future, through meeting these challenging changes."
Legislation aimed at wiping out bad practices which all acknowledged to be detrimental might have been created by the activities of the few, but the standards which it would bring about would be for the basic betterment of the industry as a whole. The only concrete doubts were about early and effective enforceability of the legislation. If new laws were to be effective there must be confidence that they could and would be enforced. It had to be assumed that this enforcement would be provided, and that those who did not improVe themselves would be caught on the hop, later if not sooner.
Time was short, said Mr. Richards. "Either we meet the challenges or we leave the fields of goods transport and fleet ownership to others—others whom, I believe, are by nature and inclination incapable of doing our jobs as efficiently, economically or effectively as we can as private enterprise, truly competitive operators."
While the immediate preoccupation was with legislative challenges, the longer-term
challenge to public and private road transport was to continue to boost its business efficiency. With all the new pressures on costs and professional management imposed by legislation, efficiencies in all other fields of the business would have an importance even surpassing those of the present. And the economic survival of road transport depended, too, on the fierce, hard selling of its services and the equipping of every aspect of a business with the men and machinery to match.
The proper choice of vehicles, pressure for better roads, together with improved accounting and computing services, were all part of the future for the industry. Maybe, said Mr. Richards, the answer would lie in larger groups and in more specialization of services, but whatever line was taken would mean higher efficiency and better-trained personnel at every level.
Mr. Richards concluded: "I believe that all these challenges will be met. And that they will be best met by keen, naturally able, private enterprise, fleet transport managers and the companies for whom they will be responsible on the roads of Britain.
"I now have pleasure in declaring this Commercial Motor Fleet Management Conference—a major meeting point for all in our industries to come together and air their views—open."
(Papers presented at the Conference are reproduced on pages 60 to 75 of this issue; a full report will appear next week.)