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COMING OF AGE

11th February 1966
Page 81
Page 81, 11th February 1966 — COMING OF AGE
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

CIONCEIVED in time of war and brought to birth under the shadow of nationalization, the Road Haulage Association could hardly have had less favourable auspices. It has passed through some stormy periods and has prospered in spite of them. The constitution and functions have not altered greatly through the years. For the first time, now that the Association is on the point of reaching its majority, comprehensive proposals have been put forward for reorganization.

Many of them were envisaged in the Original plan but have not subsequently been given effect. It was supposed that the Association—or the National Road Transport Federation on its behalf— would be able to sponsor or provide the additional services which are now proposed, such as overnight accommodation, emergency repair facilities, legal aid, insurance, and even bulk buying and credit facilities. The constitution was to some extent devised to meet the wishes or calm the fears of some of the many bodies which lost their identity in the amalgamation. There was the underlying expectation that the irregularities thus built into the structure could be smoothed away with the passage of time.

Measured on this time scale the report of the Association's study group on co-operation is a logical companion piece to the original Perry Report and takes the progress of the road haulage industry a stage further. Changing circumstances have made it increasingly imperative that the Association should carry out the reappraisal that would fit it for the needs of the second half of the century.

MOST SIGNIFICANT DEVELOPMENT The most significant development since the war has been the formation of all kinds of trading groups, regional, national and functional. The Association has been called upon for advice and assistance and the time has come to prescribe the extent to which they should carry out the reappraisal that would should take. This was the purpose behind the successful resolution at the Brighton conference in 1963, calling for machinery which would enable co-operative units to be set up and a nationwide network of freight exchanges to be organized.

The main appeal of the resolution must be to the small haulier who makes up 95 per cent or even more of the membership of the Association. The twin advantages which he possesses of personal service and low overheads are increasingly being countered by requests from customers for the movement of large blocks of traffic. The small man cannot handle the consignment alone and has insufficient facilities for sub-contracting the surplus. He needs the work but he has bitten off more than he can chew.

CO-OPERATIVE GROUP REQUIRED In these circumstances a co-operative group is exactly what he requires. It will take over the responsibility of distributing the traffic among suitable operators. Its very existence will attract other bulk traffic. The resources at its disposal should make it possible to negotiate more economic rates. The commission normally retained by a clearing house will flow back to the hauliers in the group after necessary expenses have been met.

Successful groups have been established, some of them for several decades. Why has the idea not spread more rapidly? It is often too easy for the aims of a group to be circumvented by members not acting fairly towards each other, by the intervention of a clearing house prepared to undercut rates and able to find hauliers outside the group, or by various other difficulties. Firmly established groups are generally found in towns or areas isolated by an accident of geography, or where there is a nucleus of idealists able to influence their fellow operators.

These circumstances do not occur frequently enough to ensure the rapid growth of the group movement. Outside assistance and some measure of standardization would help considerably. The Association is in a good position to supply these elements if permission can be given to use its machinery for the purpose. Experience gained by one group could be used to the advantage of all. It would be possible to simplify the procedure by which some groups arrange bulk purchases of equipment and supplies. The establishment of a national code of conduct approved by the Association should also make it less easy for an operator to offend against either the spirit or the letter of his agreement.

However one looks at it, membership of a group, whether under the aegis of the Association or not, involves some diminution in an operator's independence. He is under outside control although he happens to have some share in it. The process is inevitable. In the industrial field as a whole the small man is increasingly becoming an anachronism. He may well survive longer than anywhere else in road haulage where, beyond a certain point, the disadvantages of large-scale operation will always outweigh the advantages. Implementation of the Geddes Report, if it ever came, might give a fresh fillip to the setting up of one-man businesses by drivers with a taste for being their own master. In the end, whatever political changes are made, the operator will find irresistible the benefit of co-operating with his fellows rather than remaining in an isolation which will be the reverse of splendid.

SOLID BENEFITS Solid benefits for the small man are likely from the implementation of the report of the study group. The price he may have to pay is some slackening in the control which he imagines he exerts over his destiny. Within a co-operative group he must relinquish some of his authority to the manager appointed by him and his peers. Within his Association he will find, not only that the groups which he has helped to form will become members like himself, but that his chances of playing some part in national affairs will be diminished.

Streamlining of the Association has long been urged in some quarters as a means of enabling the proper decisions on policy to be reached quickly. Whether the changes now proposed will achieve this effect remains to be seen. But it is obvious that the purpose behind them is to shake the Association clear from the traditional reactions which may lead to decisions out of keeping with modern trends and from local and sectional interests which, because they are in conflict with each other, may prevent a clear-cut decision from being reached at all.


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