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Sense of Proportion
Page 99
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Political Commentary By JA.NU S FOR a period of a few years that began during the last war, there was in force an Order giving the customer a right of appeal to impartial assessors against what he thought to be an excessive charge for the carriage of his goods by road. The Transport Act, 1953, advises Licensing Authorities, if they wish, to have regard to the charges "made and to be made" by the applicant for a licence and by objectors.
Apart from these two attempts, the law, which is only too ready to cast its influence over most of the activities of hauliers, has left him to fix his own rates. One reason for this is obvious. There seems no point in wasting time over legislation that nobody is keen to put into operation. The Road Haulage and Hire (Charges) Orders were practically a dead letter from first to last. Licensing Authorities have made little use of the hint about charges in the 1953 Act, probably preferring to keep to their former practice, which was concerned not so much with high rates as with excessively low rates used as a bait for customers.
Even when they had something approaching a monopoly, British Road Services were allowed to charge what they liked. This may seem odd when it is remembered that possession of a monopoly by the railways has always been balanced by close regulation of their rates. After June the control will be relaxed, but it will still exist. The machinery at least will be there, although it may he little more used than the war-time Orders affecting road transport
Fixed Rates for Monopoly
Control of fares by both road and rail is much stricter than control of charges for the carriage of goods. By way of compensation, the passenger-vehicle operators have the assurance that would-be competitors cannot poach on their preserves. Here again, therefore, fixed rates are imposed in exchange for a variety of monopoly.
Hauliers have privileges of their own, symbolized by the grant of an A or B licence. It is worth recollecting why these privileges do not attract corresponding restrictions on rates. A curb on the growth in the number of hauliers does not lead to a monopoly, first because the trader retains the right to carry his own goods in his own road vehicles and, secondly, because hauliers are in genuine competition with each other. The tendency is to cut rates—and at times to cut them too severely—rather than for hauliers to combine in order to force their prices up. Even B.R.S. have had to keep their rates lower than no doubt they would have liked, but probably still a little higher than those of most independent hauliers.
If the Transport Tribunal, or some other body, were charged with the duty of compiling official rates schedules for hauliers, they would have to produce lists, far more voluminous than even the railway rate books. In the end there would almost have to be a rate for eacn separate consignment. Mileage, weight, and what the British Transport Commission now call " loadability," would present the least of the difficulties. Other problems that past compilers of rates schedules have found almost insoluble include the waiting time at each end of the journey and the chances of a return load. The job that one haulier can do cheaply another will find expensive, although with the next job that comes along it is not unlikely that the position will be reversed.
Legislators, who can be impartial on this point, have always at least had the wit to recognize that a comprehensive rates system for road haulage is impracticable. In spite of this, hauliers themselves have continued to harbour the concept of standard rates. This may be because for the individual operator a schedule of the charges that he will make is possible, even desirable. His schedule will be competitive within the range of merchandise that he is mainly equipped to carry. Outside that range, his prices will rise and escape record altogether where the goods are of the kind that he cannot handle, or are for destinations that he will not serve. He knows that his fellow hauliers have their own tariffs, which are not the same as his in every respect. In spite of this, he fancies that the ideal is a universal schedule free from individual anomalies.
Variations in Increases The fiction of the standard rate becomes a political danger to hauliers when it is necessary to make some increase in charges. The inevitable recommendation is that they should apply a percentage increase. On the last occasion, when the price of liquid fuel went up by an amount that included an extra shilling a •gallon on the tax, the figure for hauliers under free enterprise was 10 per cent., whereas B.R.S. applied an increase of only 7+ per cent. Those people who disliked the haulier, or wished for reasons of their own to denigrate him, made good capital of this apparent discrepancy.
Perhaps naturally, they did not attempt to translate percentages into hard cash. It is generally accepted that the rates of hauliers are on the whole less than those of -B.R.S. Itt some ways this may be regrettable, particularly where the nationalized rate is fair and the independent rate too low to guarantee a continuation of the same standard of service. Be that as it may, a difference, in starting prices obviously alters the effect of whatever proportion is added. If a B.R.S. rate was £.1 a ton, and some operators have been content with 15s., increases of 71 and 10 per cent. respectively will work out the same in each case, and B.R.S. will still be receiving a more substantial reward than their competitors.
Hauliers' Dilemma Recent reductions in the Suez surcharge have added to the confusion. The hauliers appeared to put more on than B.R.S. last December, and did not altogether relish the impression that this gave. They appeared inApril to be taking off more than B.R.S., and they like the resulting impression no better, more especially where it is made upon their customers. Each time a rate alteration is. needed, this dilemma of the hauliers becomes apparent. They want the public, and especially Parliament, to think they provide an economical, even. a cheap service under private enterprise. They do not want their own customers (who may fed they are paying quite enough) to be encouraged as a result to think about going elsewhere for their transport in order to save money.