Free choice for industry call
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IN A SCATHING attack on the environmental lobby, Road Haulage Association national chairman Jack Male told British industry that it must remain free to choose its transport mode.
And he claimed that Transport 2,000 "is nothing more than a front organisation for the National Union of Railwaymen aiming to ensure the existence of transport which is no longer suited to meeting the requirements of a manufacturing nation."
Mr Male told the road hau lage industry that it had no need to plead special circumstances to justify its survival.
"There are only two factors that determine our continued existence and they are cost and efficiency, and once this ceases we will expect to go out of business and no amount of half-truths and factual distortions will prevent this happening," said Mr Male.
Transport costs were a decisive factor in the final selling prices of manufactured goods and any attempt by the Government to dictate the choice of transport mode would lead to Britain pricing itself out of the markets of the world.
A complex that provided needed local jobs also created jobs in other parts of the country, he said. "How long would this continue if the Government were to decide that the products of a company must be transported by a mode dictated by some faceless bureaucrat," demanded Mr Male.
But he also pointed out that both road and rail had important contributions to make to the movements of goods in Britain and abroad — but the mode should still be the choice of the customer.
"He who pays the piper calls the tune," said Mr Male, "and it is the customer who pays in the end," he added.
And he warned that unless the whole of industry stood up to be counted there could come a day when the mode of transport is dictated by a third party.