Do Hauliers Know Their Jobs ?
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A PIQUANT situation has arisen in East Anglia this season in connection with the haulage of the sugar-beet crop. Growers have actually offered hauliers rates higher 'than those for which they were asking—higher than those• agreed by the — Eastern Area of A.I.O. This is the more extraordinary having in-mind the events which led to the production of such a scale of rates for the traffic by the Eastern Area sugar-beet hauliers, that schedule conflicting, in respect of the rates for longer hauls, with the one propos4d from A.R.O. Headquarters for application on a national basis.
Our readers may recall that a big effort was made to come to an agreement with the National Farmers Union on a national scale of rates. Meetings of experienced sugar-beet hauliers were held, and the subject of costs and rates thrashed out most thoroughly. Our costs expert, S.T.R., .who has made a special study of this subject, had the pleasure of assisting in that work. Agreement had practically been reached when, without warning, the Eastern Area operators cut across the agreed schedule, producing an independent one with rates lower than the proposed national scale. They did so because it was their belief that their customers would not pay the -rates according to that scale. As it was useless to proceed with negotiations for a national scale in the face of sectional disagreement, those negotiations, which had practically reached the point of being successful, for the first time in the history of the industry, had to be dropped and the work of months was thus thrown away.
It now seems that Mr. Sewill, S.T.R. and the hard-working Committee which _ drew up the national schedule, were perfectly right and that the scaling down was ,quite unnecessary. These hauliers in the Eastern Area quite obviously, and this is putting it bluntly, did not know their own businesses. Let us hope that this will be a lesson to those who are so apt to disregard and even nullify the practical work of those whom they have duly selected to represent their interests and who work so hard and conscientiously on their behalf.