QUALITY GUARANTEED
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• A potential holder of an operator's licence has always been required to show good repute and adequate financial standing, but until now those requirements have never been quantified. Under the latest proposals from the European Commission, however, the financial requirement would become so, with the need for an operator to provide a guarantee in order to get a licence.
On the surface, such a requirement smacks of yet another imposition by the faceless bureaucrats, far removed from the real world of commerce and haulage; of an unnecessary extra burden on already hard-pressed operators. Why, it might be asked, should one group be burdened with such a requirement (and the interest charges it would attract) when other traders do not have such impositions on them?
Look beyond the surface, however, and the idea of a guarantee for good conduct becomes a most attractive idea. International haulage, for better or worse, is about to become much more liberalised. Far more hauliers will be crossing borders, incurring debts or even fines in places far from home and local jurisdiction. The presence of a guarantee might offer some security to those who might otherwise suffer from non-payment — one of the great burdens of subcontractors, for instance.
Far more importantly, however, the requirement for a guarantee would act as yet another brake on the entry to the haulage industry of those who do not have adequate resources to do a haulage job properly. Be they cowboys or just unrealistic, untrained optimists, there are far too many operators in the road transport business who do not, and never will, make a decent return on their activities. Their presence in the industry harms the more professional operator directly, through the rate-cutting in which they indulge in order to survive. Their presence in the industry harms the professional operator indirectly by tainting the industry's reputation.
If the requirement to provide a guarantee equivalent to 10% of the replacement value of every vehicle in the fleet was to become law, it would certainly dissuade some of those whom the industry does not need (and who might slip through the existing LA net) from entering or staying in the industry.