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Echo from the past by janus
VETERANS in road haulage scent the battle from afar with the mere suggestion of a limit to a radius of 25 miles. It was this diabolical circle that 20 years ago aroused even more fury than nationalization itself.
For the benefit of new readers it should be explained that under the Transport Act 1947 hauliers whose businesses were not taken over were obliged with few exceptions to obtain permits from British Road Services to carry traffic beyond 25 miles from their base. In comparison with this bizarre piece of legislation even quantity licensing must seem only a mild aberration_ • The Ministry of Transport may have been rash in reviving old ernnities by choosing 25 miles as the radius within which a driver may drive for up to four hours in a day without keeping a record. The limit was not among the original proposals. It is apparently intended to prevent abuse of a concession.
At least that is no doubt the way in which the Ministry has phrased it. Operators have learned to accept meekly language of this kind which would come more appropriately from a prison governor. A more appropriate wording would be that drivers who drive more than four hours in a day are compelled to keep records and that this restriction applies even within the free zone when a vehicle goes outside the range of 25 miles.
Obviously the Ministry must have in mind local deliveries by a part-time driver. There are other circumstances in which the privilege will be useful. Maintenance men normally employed in a workshop may need to take a lorry on a short testing run. There may be occasional journeys between two depots reasonably close together. A spare driver may have to be sent out to pick up a vehicle on which the regular driver has exhausted his legal ration of time.
AT this point a problem may arise. If the relief driver is not to keep records the vehicle must be within 25 miles of the operating centre. Moreover this must be the operating centre of the vehicle and not of the driver. In other words a record must be kept for the outward but not for the inward journey.
Coupling operating centres with 25 miles
reinforces the echo of the 1947 legislation. Operators are prepared to accept that there must be some anomalies in the regulations governing hours and records. If road safety is the justification for restrictions there is no logical case for relaxing them. in
• accordance with what is being carried, whether it be passengers, Post Office Christmas mail or agricultural products.
The practical rather than the logical rea sons can be appreciated. If this is less clear with the 25-mile limit there should still be no great difficulty in its observance. What may be harder to take is the process by which the operating centre of the vehicle comes into consideration.
Admittedly the operator is not debarred
from doing the work. All that is required of him is to see that the driver keeps a record. But if through an oversight he fails to do so the penalty can be as much as £200. And the record-keeping process no longer merely entails handing over a log sheet. The driver must have a properly numbered record book entered in a properly numbered register.
FORTUNATELY, the Ministry has accepted criticism on another point. The part-time driver who happens to come within the regulations towards the end of a working week is no longer expected to complete the records retrospectively. They need only be kept on a day-to-day basis.
All the same, the regulations would be much easier to understand and probably much better respected if they were kept as simple as possible. If it is merely stated that a record is not required when a driver has not been at the wheel for more than four hours in a day there can be no misunderstanding and no excuse for failing to keep the law.
In what has almost become an obsession for closing every possible loophole the Ministry may be defeating its own object. More than one ominous interpretation can be read into the recent admission—no doubt the Ministry would prefer to call it a "concession"—that up to the beginning of June the enforcement staff will be concentrating their efforts on bringing the new rules to the attention of employers and drivers.
Nothing is said about explaining the new rules but this will undoubtedly be the main function of the enforcement staff. A good deal of explanation will be needed more especially for the small operators. Many of them have still not even started to catch up with the new system of licensing.
Returns from the Licensing Authorities show that 45,000 application forms were sent out to holders of A and B licences and should have been returned some weeks ago. Within a fortnight of the introduction of operators' licensing more than one-fifth of the forms had not been sent back. After allowance is made for duplication and for operators who have vanished without trace there must remain a considerable number who on March I will be operating illegally.
/T is not unfair to say that the operator who has not come to terms with licensing is also likely to have done nothing about the new requirements for hours and records. This is the man on whom the enforcement staff should be concentrating. This is also the man who may need a long and exhausting explanation.
With simplification as its aim the Ministry has been able to produce nothing better than a memorandum running to 20 pages with over 50 paragraphs and several appendices, some of them very complicated. This is the document that the operator will receive and that the enforcement officer will be called upon to interpret.
The task will be difficult enough with hauliers. At the same time the restrictions are to apply to C licence holders who will many of them be in still greater confusion. At least most hauliers have operators' licensing behind them. For the Clicence holder the process is just about to begin. He will have to cope with two problems simultaneously.
One's greatest sympathy should perhaps be reserved for the newcomer. Without a licence of any kind he would not be a member of either of the road transport associations and could not therefore expect help from them. The enforcement staff also would be unlikely to visit him or pay any attention to him until his licence is granted. There would be copious literature available from the Licensing Authority and it is advisable that he should study it closely.
THE conscientious applicant may easily be discouraged. He sees that a large number of obligations will be imposed on him. He may be uncertain whether he can meet them all. Many of them he may not even understand. He finds— since at least the Ministry documents are clear on this point—that for contravention there are substantial penalties apart from the possible risk of losing his licence.
Although he may be the kind of operator needed his reaction will often be toseek for his talents an outlet where there are not quite so many occupational hazards. Less likely to be deterred is the applicant with correspondingly less respect for the law. He will hope that whatever he does wrong, deliberately or not, will be overlooked or will even go unnoticed.
It is to be regretted that the requirements, especially those affecting drivers as well as operators, could not be simplified into a few main items that left no room for incomprehension or ambiguity.