"C.M." Leader as Tonic to Leeds Pool Committee
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Road-transport Circles in Yorkshire Derive Encouragement from Opinion Expressed in Our Columns
WHILST "The Commercial VY Motor's " leader of last week on haulage rates did not endorse (or condemn) the schedule evolved by the Leeds Area Management Committee of the Hauliers' National Traffic Pool, it is being cited in Yorkshire, alongside Professor Gilbert Walker's recently published book "Road and Rail" (reviewed at length in our issue dated April 24) as vindicating the Area Committee's approach to the rates problem —its aim to secure a simple saedule, free from the trammels of the ponderous railways' goods classification.
Unfortunately, a Ministry of War Transport ban on publicity from the Leeds Committee, in connection with its schedule, precludes any statement from that quarter, but comments which our Yorkshire correspondent has obtained in road-transport circles reflect the encouragement derived from the " CM." leader. The comments particularly underlined the point that road-transport rates should not be burdened by what was termed the millstone of railway goods classification, and regret was expressed that the Pool's Nottingham Area Management Committee has adopted a rates schedule linked up with railway goods classification. The inclusion of an hourly charge alongside a mileage charge in the Nottingham schedule, .according to our correspondent, was also made the object of adverse criticism.
As against the application of the railway goods classification to road haul
age, it was pointed out that Professor Gilbert Walker, who is a lecturer on economics at Birmingham University. definitely lays it down in his book " Road and Rail " that railway goods classification has no • relation at all to road transport.
Speaking of his experience of the Leeds Area Committee's schedule, the head of a large Yorkshirt road-transport concern said be found that, generally speaking, it operated in a manner fair to all parties concerned. "I like the scheme, and I have not yet met anybody who does not," he added. " We are using the schedule for nonPool haulage, although, in some cases, we are charging a little more than the schedule figure. You may come across an operator who says the schedule does not qUite, fit his little corner, of the industry, but the point is that this schedule aims at meeting the require' ments,of operators as a whole."