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THUMB RULE
Page 84
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IF the customer were to welcome with open arms the long-distance-rates guide that the Road Haulage Association are now sending out to members, the chances are that the hauliers would hastily call in all the copies to find Out what they had done wrong. One supposes that they expect the trader to be suspicious, even faintly hostile. To have any significance, the guide must he intended to influence some of the rates now being charged. It is hardly likely that that influence would be exerted downwards.
Confidence in the benevolent purpose of the hauliers may be further undermined by the fact that the rates in the guide are, or so it is hoped, to be kept confidential. There is an explanation for this that should be acceptable. The rates, as the R.H.A. have been careful to point out, are not meant to be a schedule. They are a guide to show hauliers what to charge when in doubt. There is no possibility that they would be agreed by traders as a guide to what they should pay.
The customer has other ideas. He knows well enough that, unlike many other industries and services, road haulage has no fixed scale of rates. Any list presented to him, whether it were marked as a guide or a schedule, would be taken as the maximum charges. His aim would most probably be to. see what discount he could obtain. He would never be persuaded to pay anything above what was shown on the list. Before many weeks were past, he would have at his beck and call any number of hauliers, not governed by the guide, who were prepared to offer "R.H.A. rates less 10 per cent."
THE guide may be compared with the tables sometimes published in the popular Press to show how the " average " or " normal " weight of an individual should vary according to his age and height. Many people take no notice of such tables, arguing that they know better than a statistician what weight suits them best. There are many good R.H.A. members who will feel the same way about the guide. They will no doubt buy a copy, and check that in a general way it conforms with their own ideas. But they would not change their own rates, with which they are perfectly satisfied, in order to bring them into line with the guide. it is not right that these hauliers should then find their own customers throwing the book at them.
Although the trader may accept that published rates are futile unless there is some means of enforcing them, he may feel this strengthens his accusation that the R.H.A. rates guide must be inflationary. In a sense he is missing the point or arguing unfairly. In his own trade there is almost certain to be a price structure of some kind, more or less rigidly enforced, and its purpose and effect can only be to keep the price up. He cannot quarrel with hauliers for trying to build a similar structure.
What has now happened was inevitable and has merely been delayed for a number of years because of the intervention of nationalization. The long-distance group of the R.H.A. have carried out their task remarkably well. Having carefully chosen 77 key towns, they enlisted the help of thousands of hauliers all over the country to suggest reasonable rates from each town to each of the others. The rates have been analysed, modified and passed backwards and forwards until it has been established that the operators concerned were satisfied with them. The residue of rates sifted in this way are empirical rather than mathe c46 matical, and do not exclude the possibility that rate between two towns may differ according to the direction ii which the goods are travelling.
The results of the survey have been tabulated under 7!. code numbers, each with half a dozen prices per tor varying according to the size of the consignment. Thi, list of prices can be contained on one sheet, which is al that has to be reprinted if at any time there is a chang, in rates. Each town has a list to itself containing only cod, numbers of which the value depends solely on the maste list of prices. Except for a few pages, therefore, the guid, is a permanent tribute to the ingenuity of its designers.
Not so many years ago, much of their energies wont have been wasted in the vain search for a formula, whicl it was thought must exist, like the philosopher's stone Uncongenial elements, particularly the intractable returi load factor, were regarded merely as obstacles that mus be overcome or exorcized. The fault lay with the mode the railway rates structure, chosen perhaps because it wa
the only example available. It may have served th purpose•when the railways had a monopoly, but has Ion since become an anachronism, abandoned even by its ow inventors.
WITH this misleading example, hauliers for a long tim went on believing that a perfect rates schedule could 6 devised without much difficulty if it were not for th customer. This mistake is no longer being 'made. Th new rates guide pays proper tribute to the customer an might almost have been -dedicated to him. It does hots much show what hauliers ought to get as what they migl reasonably expect to get.
By distinguishing between rates according to the -dim tion in which the vehicle is moving, the schedule, perhar for the first time in a national docuMent of this kin, acknowledges the principle of the return load, whi delicately and cleverly avoiding any mention of it. Thet is no pretence that the rates have been worked out on a arithmetical basis and must therefore have a rightness about them. The guide gives the impression Eh: there might well be a different rate for each journey, bi that a possible list of nearly 140,000 rates is about as muc as a sensible person could demand.
ONE of these rates ought to suit him, but the influence c competition tends to deflect him to another rate lower dom the scale. If there is such a thing as a fair rate for the jo the natural machinery of the market exerts trernendor pressure to depress that rate. The guide, it is hoped, w act as a cushion against competition that becomes tc harsh.
The aim is modest. The hauliers who have received ti guide have also agreed to observe a code of conduct. effect, they are promising not to depart too far, from tl guide in any of the rates they charge. it is an undertakii they should not find too arduous, certainly not impossibl As time goes on, they will persuade other hauliers to folk their example. The hope is that the practice will spre even into the difficult field of sub-contracting, where ti clearing house operator, with no responsibilities or oblig tions, is tempted to quote the first rate that comes into I head, knowing that there is a certain profit for himself.