OPERATORS SUGGEST LICENSED BOOKING AGENTS
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A New Move in the North ern Area to Regularize Agencies ORTH-COUNTRY motor coach II operators have sought the support of a local member of Parliament in bringing to the notice of the new Minister of Transport, Mr. Pybus, the need for licensing booking agents. An active part in the movement is being taken by the Northern Road Transport Owners Association, representing the majority of local private operators.
Serious losses sustained by coacheperating companies in consequence of their inability to obtain satisfactory financial settlements with certain agents, have brought about the movement, which is also directed at the alarming growth of unofficial agents.
The Minister is to be appealed to in the hope that action will be taken to license all bona fide agents, subject to the observation of certain conditions of fitness and the periodical production of trading account books.
It is held that the Commissioners cannot fairly judge the amount of business recently done by the vehicle operators-, as shown in the books submitted at the time of the hearing of their applications, as considerable percentages of the income of the companies, in the Northern Area at any rate, are in the hands of the agents.
Until the agents are licensed on the same principle as the operators, it is contended, the road-travel business will be difficult, and licence conditions imposed by the Commissioners are not expected to assist the operators. Greater power to deal with the agents should, it is thought, be vested in the Area Traffic Commissioners.
The movement is directed not against the bona fide agents but against certain members of the unofficial class of agent, who are not wholly dependent on the road-travel business.
The attitude of the Booking Agents Association of Great Britain, Ltd., is that the licensing of booking agents is impracticable and that the problem is a domestic one which can be tackled by negotiation between operators' and agents' associations. After all, the operators ought to be able to arrange their agency organization just as any manufacturing concern has to control its selling agents. It would be a sorry state of affairs if our chassis manufacturers had to ask the Government to licence all commercial-vehicle agents.