ETMC chairman Frank Lem told delegates: "road transport is bad
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at representing its own interests." He wants to see that change.
• According to Frank Lerno, chairman of the European Transport Maintenance Council, Europe's transport industry is split into three 'islands'.
"There are the 'painful' islands with the 'p of producer; the 'under' islands with the 'u' of user and the lazy' islands with the T of legislator," he said last week, officially opening the 1986 ETMC conference in Hamburg. He explained that he wants the council to become a bridge-builder, linking these islands and uniting Europe's still disparate transport industry.
The producers are on a 'painful' island because demand for their trucks continues to fall and because Europe's various construction and use regulations mean every country requires different specifications.
The underdog users live on 'under' island, said Lem°, because they are under estimated and far too quiet. "We are not taken seriously," he told the conference. "Just because the operators' problems are not sent in a beautiful technical form to the producers, it doesn't mean their representations are any less useful or important."
The lazy legislators are allowed to doze away on their island because the transport industry is not knocking hard enough on their doors, said Lemo. "We should be telling them how we want things done, what we want and when we want it carried out — ETMC must establish itself as a pan-European lobby group to bring standardised weights, sizes, rules, regulations and taxes.
"Road transport is bad at representing its own interests," he told the conference. "I'm still amazed after working in the road transport industry for so many years that there is so little communication."
There was plenty of communication during the three days of conference, however, with 37 sessions looking at topics as diverse as management leadership, coach safety, computers, oil seals, bearings, and border crossing problems.
A record number of 580 delegates attended this year's conference, of whom more thah 300 were "users" or operators.