STORMY PORTS?

10th November 1961, Page 163

10th November 1961

Page 163

Page 163, 10th November 1961 — STORMY PORTS?

Noticed an error?
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.

MMENTARY by JANUS

1MITTEES of inquiry may not always find it easy get opinions and comments. I can hardly imagine to be true of the Rochdale Committee currently ting the present and future of major docks and in Britain. Almost all the organizations that the :e have approached, and quite likely some others not been asked, are likely to have expatiated at ible length and for the most part at the top of :es.

lge from reports so far made available, it would be to compose a more lamentable tale. Everything seems to be wrong with the docks, with a few )le exceptions, and the blame is variously and laid on the port authorities, the shipping the shippers, the forwarding agents, the customs rs, the dockers and the hauliers. The committee 'ell be tempted to stop their ears to further ts, lest they become too greatly discouraged and their assignment in despair.

t glance, the complaints seem to defy analysis and sification. Their scope is certainly wide. Before reach the docks, vehicles often find they are stuck sted streets, out of which they slowly extricate :s in order tp form an even longer queue at the e. However, street congestion is something with

• ad users are reluctantly familiar. It is part of al road problem, and possibly the Rochdale Corn11 regard it as such, although it has found a place of the observations already made.

vhen the dock gate is passed that the special likely to interest the committee begin to show s. The road operator finds he is in a different Infusing and illogical. It is within these cloistered that his manifold complaints at last take shape. !merits so far put in as evidence to the committee . read like dispatches from a beleaguered garrison country.

nt user can see no signs of an organized plan to i traffic or of any liaison among the large number 'its concerned. There is little or no mechanical it upon which he has come to rely to speed up and take the ache out of transport. The Customs seems to him to have been taken straight out ges of Kafka. Above all, the labour situation in appears to the visitor from outside to be governed ti that has only the remotest connection with the hand_ ay be an exaggerated picture and it is certainly of all ports. What it perhaps conveys effectively e life of the docks has still not shaken itself free tempo of 50 years ago, which itself, no doubt, to•time immemorial when every sea voyage was iventure calling for a leisurely and ceremonial, iugh. preparation. The time spent loading was NI compared with the length of the subsequent which to the romantic mind seemed almost like ming of the railways, so far as one can under:1 little to break this attitude of mind. The ty was there for speeding up loading and unloady this means cutting costs. The authorities took Lntage of it, or that is how it must appear to the road user. They had no scruples about keeping railway trucks waiting for long periods, taking up space and earning no revenue. Without doubt the railways objected but it does not seem that their protests had much effect. It is partly for this reason that the haulier on occasion accuses the port authorities of having a railway mentality.

The whole problem has to look different from the point of view of road transport. The picture of goods carefully wrapped and protected and carefully stowed away in the hold in preparation for a voyage is replaced by the image of the motorist, about to set off on a journey round the world, who throws his luggage in a pile on the back seat of his car at the last moment. He saves time and money in the same way as the manufacturer with a machine for export who loads it, without fuss and without wrapping, on the trailer that will take it all the way to its destination.

Proper use made of road transport, and proper facilities for it, ought to go a long way towards curing congestion at the docks. Properly administered and regulated, road vehicles could be made to save dock space rather than to clutter it up. The aim must be to load or unload them as quickly as possible, so that they can be sent on their way. The crucial mistake is to regard them as convenient mobile warehouses that can be kept waiting indefinitely. Such an attitude of mind betrays the wish to put the clock back to the beginning of the century.

IT must have been in some such tranced mood that the London Chamber of Commerce suggested to the Rochdale Committee that shippers should be urged to make more use of the railways. " While access by road is gravely congested, the railways complain of under-utilization," states the London Chamber's report. It goes on to give the result of a sample survey last December, from which it emerged that 77 per cent, of exporters outside London who used the port made use of road transport, while only 23 per cent. made use of the railways.

An alternative proposal to cope with the problem of London comes from the National Union of Manufacturers. They suggest reducing the concentration of imports and exports through the London area and diverting cargoes to other ports on a planned basis. South Wales, Southampton, Hull and Grangemouth are put forward as alternatives where there are spare capacity and adequate facilities.

Spreading the loads among the nation's ports seems a better idea than redistributing the goods "more evenly between road and rail," as the London Chamber propose. The Rochdale Committee might prefer as a beginning -to break the problem down into separate ports and even into individual ships. Here the issue is simple. For each vessel a certain number of days are allowed to take on a certain volume of goods. There ought not to be an insuperable difficulty in calling the goods forward in a steady flow instead of, as so often happens, leaving the responsibility to the shippers, who naturally tend to wait until the last few days.

That one or two of the more progressive ports, such as Manchester, have instituted schemes for spreading the load evenly over the loading period should cause no surprise. What ought to be surprising is that such schemes are not more general The breaking of the mental barrier that one supposes to be responsible should be one of the primary objects of the Rochdale Committee.

STORMY PORTS?

Page 163

Tags