PROBLEMS OF THE HAULIER AND CARRIER.
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Reckoning Up the Costs and Charges for a Smithfield Market Round of Collections and Deliveries.
I N the " day's work" which I carried out with a 1.friendly haulier, and which I have described in the course of the two recently published articles of this series, we covered 72 miles in traversing the to round trips from Smithfield Market (London) to the suburbs, delivering parcels of meat of various sizes and weights to butchers' shops in those suburbs. The day was a long one, of 131 hours in ail—from half-past five in the morning to seven o'clock in the evening. Out of that only half an hour or so was devoted to meals, and from three hours to three and a quarter hours for loading up and receiving instructions at the market. The actual journeys, therefore, took from eight and three-quarter hours to the hours, and of that, again; quite a considerable proportion of the time was taken up in making deliveries, delays occurring in a good many instances from a variety of causes.
Unavoidable Delays and Inconveniences.
None of these delays is avoidable, or will be avoidable, so long as market conditions, market stall holders and retail tradesmen continue as they do at present. The conditions of these journeys, as I have described them, are the conditions under which haulage contracts of this description have to be carried out. The delays and inconveniences are such as have to be borne by any haulier or carrier who does work of this hind, and, what is most important, the charges which are made for the contracts must be reckoned on such a basis as to allow for the extra time and labour involved by the circumstances.
Making Allowance for Overtime When Costing.
.To indicate exactly what I mean by the last statement I will quote an example of what might easily happen. I wilt suppose that a haulier has approached a market salesman or stall holder for the first time, soliciting his custom. The stall holder asks him to tender on the basis of the runs I have described, but tells him no more
than that there are involved two round trips of 36 miles a day for five days a week. The haulier reckons this up as 360 miles a week-72 miles a day. At an average speed of 16 miles an hour, which he thinks he can do easily, that will involve four and a half hours travelling time. Then he assumes half an hour at the inward and outward ends of each trip—two hours in all—making a six-and-a-half-hour working day, say seven hours in all, including time getting to the starting point from his own garage and returning there again at night. "Good," thinks he; " nice, comfortable job, this; I shall be leading the life of a gentleman so long as this lasts." He considers, therefore, that the standard rates for charges will apply without need for heartburning, and looks up 7'7e Commercial Motor Tables of Operating Costs and charges accordingly. He discovers that a fair rate for 300 miles a week should be £17 16s., and for -400 miles a week 120. He promptly tenders £19, and eventually, after a little haggling, accepts £18 10s.
When the Job is Liable to Show a Loss. .
On getting down to the job he finds that all is not, as he thought, beer and skittles. HP discovers, in short, all the little snags that I have described, and that, instead of a working day of seven hours at the outside, he is out and about on this job for thirteen and a half hours each day. If he emploYs a driver he has to pay him overtime. If he does not employ a driver he is just as badly off really, and the, additional cost is round about £2 a week, possibly more, so that, really, he ought to have asked £21 for the job instead of £19; and should certainly never have accepted less than £20 a week.
Considering now the actual expense; the operating cost of a three-ton lorry, at standard rates, running 360 miles per week, and' making no allowance for overtime, is 114 a week in round figures. There will be Sundry establishment expenses in connection with a job of this kind, but, until the business infirmly established and calls' for more than one vehicle in order to meet customers' requirements, these should not amount to more than about 5s. a week. In The Commercial Motor's standard tables 13 10s. a week is assumed to be a reasonable profit. (If this does not satisfy the reader, or if it appears to him to be too much, he must, of course, modify these figures accordingly.) I propose to take £3 10s. as correct, and must now add the £2 a week which we have seen will be involved as payment for overtime. This overtime pay must be allowed for in the estimates, even if the driver and owner of the vehicle be one and the same person. If allowance be not made for it now, just because there is no driver to pay, then trouble will ensue when the business does develop and when paid drivers have to be employed. They, of course, will naturally insist on being paid, and if there has been no provision hitherto for the money, then revision of the haulier's charges will be necessary in an upward direction, possibly at a very awkward time, when perhaps any alteration of that kind would result in the loss of the contract.
£20 a Week Shown to be a Fair Charge.
Allowing, therefore, 5s. a week for establishment expenses, 13 10s. a week for profit, and £2 a week for extra wages as overtime pay, or alternately as extra profit to compensate the haulier himself for the long hours, the total charge should be 114, which we have already shown to he the cost of running, plus the above three items, totalling 119 liis. a week in all or, say, £20.
Now, a problem which frequently arises in connection with work of this kind is: How are the charges to be apportioned when, as is often the case, the haulier collects from several stall holders in the same market for the same trip? It may crop up even if he only collects from one man, for the -latter may wish to get from the haulier some idea as to how his own charges to customers for delivery should be assessed.
The best thing for the haulier to do is to work out a price per lb. weight of goods per trip. To get at that ho must first of all calculate the price per trip. In the particular case which we are considering that is easy. There are ten trips per week, and as the charge Is £20 a week, the charge per trip is obviously £2. Then let us aSsume that an average load is 2+ tons-it happens to have been about that on these two trips, but the figure taken should be rather less than the capacity of the vehicle, since the loadIs more often likely to be less than it is to be over that capacity. The cost of darting 2+ tons is, therefore, 12. In other words, 5,600 lb. are carried for 480 pence. The simple division of the pence into the pounds demonstrates that the cost is very nearly one penny for 12 lb. That charge holds good so long as the individual parcels, or, more correctly speaking, the total collection from any one client on any one trip does not fall below a certain minimum, which, in this case, should be 1 cwt. The minimum charge can then be one shilling. If a stall holder happens to .have, one morning or afternoon, some very small parcel which he wishes to be delivered, such a one, for example, as the half-dozen kidneys to which reference has been made in the preceding articles, then no doubt the haulier will meet him on this ; at any rate, he will do so if he is a regular customer or likely to become one in the near future. If the lorry be loaded, and be going near the destination of that parcel of kidneys or its equivalent, then its delivery will, of course, cost the haulier nothing more than the time taken to hand it over to the recipient, so that the matter then requires no more consideration.
Apart from such special occasions as that, the 12 lb. for a penny scale cap be applied to the general run of work of this kind, provided, of course, that all the other considerations to which I have given attention in this article are the same.
How the Scale of Charges Works Out.
it may be Of interest to apply this scale to the deliveries which were described last week. On the first • trip, it may be remembered, the weights of individual parcels were as follow :-120 lb., 800 lb., 2 lb., 18 lb., 1,200 lb., 760 lb., 52 lb., 980 lb., 1,500 lb. and 680 lb. The prices for these -would, therefore, be is., 5s. 6d., 3d., 4c1., 8s. 4d., 5s. 4c1., 6d., 6s. 10d., 10s. 6d. and 4s. 9d. The total would he -E2 3s. 4d., which would give a slight margin over the sum which we have shown•should be the smallest charge for. the work Of each
journey. S.T.R.