PROBLEMS OF THE HAULIER AND CARRIER.
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Possibilities of Obtaining Post Office Contracts. Now is the Time to Consider Christmas Business.
ONE of the earliest of motor-haulage contracts was that devoted to the carriage of the mails. Indeed, it is a fact that the conveyance of His Majesty's mails' was one of the principal factors in determining the need for the maintenance of good roads. When, therefore, I learned that a paper dealing with the organization of the mechanical transport of the British postal services was to be read before the Institute of 'Transport, I felt sure that something would transpire which would be worth noting in these columns, and I was not disappointed.
Plenty of Contracts Available.
To begia with, the haulage contractor on the look-out for work should note that whenever the Post Office authorities decide that the introduction of a new vehicle is desirable—and, it should be noted, this happens on an average at least once a day—they invariably consider whether the work could not more economically be performed by a contractor than by officially owned transport. No Post Officeowned vehicle is put into commission until it has been established definitely that. it would be cheaper by a fixed minimum sum than a motor obtained under contract or by an other means of performing a given service.
We thus have the assnra.nce, first, that contractors are always given opportunities to quote for Post Office transport work ; secondly, that those contracts can work out at a figure slightly in excess of the Post Office costs and still be acceptable, thus allowing a margin for profit to the contractor; and, thirdly, that a sufficient number of new contracts arises in a year to average more than one new vehicle a day. Emphasis is laid on the word new" because it is desirable to understand that there are still plenty of old contracts in the hands of outside hauliers, all of which, presumably, come up for renewal or for
• tender from time to time. This must be so, because the maximum period for road mail contracts is five years, whilst the majority are for one or two years only. Moreover, the contracts to which I am now referring—those which were dealt with in Mr. Lane's paper—are for collection and delivery of mail matter only. There is other mechanical road-transport work in connection with Post Office operations, such as the carriage of postal, telephone and telegraph stores, as well as engineering personnel.
The point that clearly arises from these statements of fact is that hauliers in search of work, and partieularly those in possession of suitable vehicles, or prepared to invest their capital in the purchase of such Mr. Tom Thornycro Thornycroft steam Eva Brighton in the Old Cr ing Emancipation Da
machines, may well consider the advisability of getting into touch with the Postmaster-General to see what is available in that line, and to learn whether the conditions of tender and contract are such as would appeal to him. The matter is one of special interest just now, when the extra transport needed to deal with the heavy Christmas mails must inevitably he under consideration.
The Kind of Work on Offer.
First, as to the kind of work which is on offer. There is the conveyance of mails in areas not served, or served only to a limited extent or at unsuitable times, by railway. These are generally long-distance runs as compared with the second kind of work—the conveyance of mails between tile railway stations and the General Post Offices in large towns and in rural districts wherein the stations are not withia easy reach of the local Post Offices. There is the work of parcel delivery and collection, letter-box collection and the house-tohouse delivery of letters and parcels in rural areas. The next service is the : conveyance of postmen, with or without their cycles, to the starting paints of their deliveries. This, it should be explained, occurs when the postman's round is a long way from the sorting office, where he collects the letters and parcels he has to deliver.
• The motor vehicle picks up a load of postmen, each with his letters and parcels and, where necessary, his bicycle, and conveys them to the points from .which they start their rounds. There is a service supplementary to this— the conveyance of second loads of letters and parcels to these postmen on their distant rounds.
These are thevarious classes of work, but it should be understood that any vehicle is not specifically confined or allotted to any one kind of job. Such is not the ease. An average day's work may comprise a combination of several kinds of operation; for example, the same vehicle may on the same day be engaged in post office-to-station trips, on delivery and collection work and in the conveyance of postmen to and from their • rounds. ft driving the 1895 gon from London to ocks Parade celebrat.
y of November, 1896.
Size and Type' of Vehicle.
These conditions and the fact that large vehicles would involve too much time per trip, making few trips a day, instead of "little and often" which meets Post Office requirements, make the use of smaller types of vehicle desirable. Moreover, mails are bulky in relation to their weight, and this also helps to determine the vehicle capacity. The vehicles owned by the Post Office are of five types so far as bodywork is concerned, and three as regards chassis. The largest chassis employed is of 30-cwt. capacity and that carries a body having a content of 320 cubic ft. Two sizes of body are fitted to 1-ton chassis ; the larger is 250 cubic ft. and the smaller 160 cubic ft. in capacity. Half-ton chassis carry bodies of 105 cubic ft. and 70 cubic ft. capacity. There are still in use 8 h.p. motorcycles with sidecars of from 30 cubic ft. to 36 cubic ft. capacity, -but these machines have been expensive to maintain and difficult to keep in service. They are now regarded as obsolescent and are gradually being replaced by light vans which experi-ente has shown to be not only less
costly to operate, but more efficient in service. The latest type of vehicle to be introduced is the motorcycle of about 2i. lip., which is fitted either with a pannier carrier over the rear wheels or with a light side carrier of 8 cubic ft. capacity. For loads in excess of 90 lb. to 100 lb. a light van is believed to be economically advantageous.
There are, in all, 2,320 motor vehicles owned by the Post Office and in use. Of these 48 are of 320 cubic ft. capacity for 30-cwt. loads, 245 are of 250 cubic ft. capacity, and 124 are of 160 cubic ft. capacity, both for one-ton loads. There are 761 of 105 cubic ft. capacity half-ton loads and 704 of 70 cubic ft. capacity 05the same tonnage. Heavy motorcycle combinations nuMber 54, lightweight motorcycle combinations 149, and solo motorcycles 235.
The earliest official motorvans were all put into service to replace unduly expensive contract motors and this procedure was followed for some two or three y.ears after the introduction of official vehicles. Latterly, however, most of the new vehicles have been put into commission in order to mechanize and accelerate work formerly performed by postmen on foot or cycle. This goes to emphasize the fact that reliance is still placed by the Post Office on contractors and quite a considerable proportion of the work—round about half, to be precise—is still done by contractors. As the total mileage approximates to 24,000,000, it will be appreciated that there is plenty of work available for hauliers in connection with the conveyance of the mails. Terminal loading and incidental Operation delays have been the subject of close study by the Post Office and, although it may not be the case that many hauliers have precisely the same problem to surmount, a good many of them are so placed as to be able to benefit by knowledge of. the way in which these delays, if not eliminated, are, at least, diminished. It lk at any rate, of interest to learn that, although many patent devices for loading and unloading have been tried, more orthodox methods have been found in the long run to be most successful. For the majority of parcel deliveries (and these compare closely with the kind of work . which has to be done by the country carrier), • it is now the practice to divide the delivery area for any particular van into sections for which normally there are 10 or 12 parcels. At the first handling by the postman-driver, the parcels for each of these sections are sorted into ordinary mail bags without relation, to the order of delivery of individual parcels. The bags are then trucked to the van and packed in the sequence in which they will be required for delivery purposes, the bags being numbered to facilitate this. The first bag is emptied before the van starts on its journey and the postman can then see more or less at a glance where his first ten or twelve calls will be. When the contents of the first bag are disposed of, the next bag is similarly emptied, the process being continued until all the parcels are delivered. Extensive tests show that this method secures the greatest economy in sorting, loading and delivering time. Moreover, space at sorting office loading platforms or yards is occupied for the minimum period, which is most advantageous, because, unfortunately, when the majority of the post offices in this country was designed, the extensive development of median-teal transport for postal purposes could not be foreseen, a comment which is applicable to loading bays in many factories throughout the country.
It is unfortunate that, in Mr. Lane's paper, so very little importance was attached to the matter of cost. Some reference to the method of accounting is given and it is' quite clear that, in this matter, The Commercial Motor system of costing as exemplified in our, Tables of Operating Costs has the approval of the Post Office authorities.