MARKET PRICES
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COMMENTARY by JANUS
As I suggested last week, the transport industry seems to be regarded as the happy hunting ground of the legislator, and the road transport operator is particularly singled out as a victim. It is not merely that he is a political shuttlecock, subject to an unpleasant mental strain every time there is a general election, or even the rumour of one. At the best of times, he is pinned down by a network of regulations, calculated to inspire in him the feeling that he scarcely dare send one of his vehicles out on the road lest it cause offence.
The latest batch of regulations has recently been released from the pigeonholes of the Ministry of Transport, and will flutter down at intervals upon the road operator's reluctant head. The increase from 30 to 40 m.p.h. in the speed limit for goods vehicles is a step in the right direction so far as it goes, although there is an accompanying threat that the new limit will be much more rigorously enforced than the old. But the rest of the new legislation is designed mostly to make it increasingly difficult for an operator to send a vehicle and load on a journey that takes up more than a certain amount of room on the roads.
IF Britain enters the Common Market. the first effect he is likely to notice is a further encroachment on his shrinking area of freedom. There may, it is true, be a relaxation of some restrictions, but the general drift seems likely to be the other way. That at least is the impression gained from the rough outline of a common transport policy now emerging from the fog across the Channel. There may be a welcome simplification of the procedure for international road transport, in .which the average
British operator is not at present greatly interested. In contrast, a new set of regulations is threatened for the domestic carrier.
Many of them will cover areas where restrictions are already thick on the ground, and they will be imposed by a supranational authority in some cases over the heads of the Ministry of Transport. Size and weight limits for vehicles will certainly be made uniform throughout the European Economic Community. Vehicle and fuel taxation will also be fixed by a central body, and the amount that can be spent on road building will have to be agreed in the same way. Sooner or later, wages and conditions of employment will be laid down. Finally, schedules of rates will be drawn up, made compulsory and possibly published.
THIS is perhaps to put the situation in the worst possible light. Many of the restrictions to be imposed generally throughout the E.E.C. are, in fact, less onerous than those at present in force in Britain. As for agreed rates schedules, many hauliers have been hoping for them in vain for more years than they can remember. All the same, they would like to think that they had more than a passing chance of watching the working out of their respective destinies.
In general, it may be that they have no choice. It would be sheer vanity on their part to expect the Government or E.E.C. to be particularly tender about the feelings of transport operators at a time when so many other great issues are at stake. In any case, Britain is not yet in the Common Market, and operators can have no higher status than that of spectators while effect is given to plans tha will be of vital importance to them once the decision I.( join has been taken.
In spite of all this, they have the right to express thei opinions strongly if they see plainly that major difficultie are being created. The machinery for fixing rates coull easily provide an example. According to reports, not al rates would be included in the scheme. Before they cam into operation, the journey would have to extend to mor than, say, 30 miles and the goods would have to weigl more than five tons. There are also likely to be som categories of excluded traffic. The actual rates charged would not have to comply rigidly with the published tariff: although the tolerance may not be great.
IN Britain, the road haulage industry, in spite o sustained efforts spreading over many years, have neve been able to agree on schedules of rates for general gooch They are entitled, therefore, to doubt whether the transpor experts of E.E.C. will be any more successful. The circum stances are, of course, very different, and it might b necessary in the first place to examine the reasons for th monotonous failure of British operators to make progres along the road that their European contemporaries are no entering, not apparently in complete agreement amon themselves.
Lack of machinery for enforcement has usually been pt forward by British hauliers as the obstacle in the way o agreed rates. There is always another operator, so th complaint runs, who is willing to carry the traffic at a lowe price. This has been proved true on countless occasion' but there is more to the problem than that. Althoug rate-cutting and cut-throat competition are to be deplorer there are often circumstances that enable an operator t, make a reasonable profit out of what his competitors regar as an unreasonable rate.
SIMILAR circumstances may make it possible for th trader to run his own vehicles for less than he is asked t, pay a haulier_ There is no sensible reason why he shoull not do so, provided his calculations are correct and it i actually cheaper for him to carry his own traffic. Otherwise he is literally making a false economy. It would seem eve more of a pity if a haulier was in a position to accept th goods at the right price, but was debarred from taking th opportunity by the limitations of a statutory rates schedul(
More than any other feature of the E.E.C. proposals, th plan for a fixed tariff can play a major part in altering th structure of the road haulage industry in Britain, and i particular the relationship between the haulier and the licence holder. The changes that take place may not nece! sarily be for the best. If this is the case in Britain, th same drawbacks may reveal themselves in various othe countries. '
Could not the transport experts now working to shap the destiny of road operators within E.E.C. have somethin to learn from Britain? If this is so, and hauliers in th, country have serious faults to find with the European plar they would be justified in making their objections hear( even if the subject seems insignificant when compared wit such major problems as agricultural reviews, temperat foodstuffs and, indeed, the future of the European Fre Trade Area.