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Traders transport: what's in store ?
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Hugh Featherstone, director-general of the Freight Transport Association, talks to Brian Cottee about haulage standards, the prospects for EEC legislation and ways of controlling the transport market
Now that Britain has ! to stay in the Common at I am sure many trans managers—own-account among them—are wong how the transport tion is likely to change especially whether the associations are going to a more hawkish attitude rds those impending reguzs which they don't like. -e we perhaps going to see er acceptance of them as lrnest of the fact that we Low good Europeans?
When you say a hawkish ide I assume you are talkyf things like tachographs drivers' hours. I believe way is open for quite sigint changes in Regulation 39 simply because Britain t alone in wanting to see ges. So I would be exely optimistic that the :m rule would disappear the drain. So far as agraphs are concerned, it ionestly very difficult to ict how Brussels will react ritain's problem when is to them, as indeed it must But clearly there is now y no way in which the nal date for tachographs be made to apply in this try. Farther than that one t look at the moment.
at in general, I don't expect sin to be particularly cish—or particularly Ash. We should look at the ;titan realistically down the Ile, in expectation of enable, but not excessive, pathy from Brussels. The r part of the EEC situation onger term, and on the nisation of the transport ket, which is the basis of recent Commission report, yuld have thought. without g handstands and somerts, one can say that the mission has made a yr stride in our direction. ; not everything we would , but nothing in Europe is • going to be; however, for first time they seem to got the emphasis right in the common transport cy which they now propose nfluenced primarily by the Is of trade, which after all vhat the Community is all at, rather than purely for interests of transport as ost a separate entity, as often seemed the case in past. Now it seems to me : they have achieved a mable balance, and from British point of view this is .emendous move forward.
Do we assume that accept once of a freer transport market means greater emphasis on regulation of admission to the industry and will this include the own-account transport manager?
HF : They will certainly press ahead with regulation of access to the haulage profession, but that is not new—it has already been agreed. What we still have to discover is how the system is to be applied in Britain and whether it is going to include own-account transport managers.
I think a freer market would also bring an increase in the pressure—which is already there—for the acceptance of the second social regulation. The unions on the Continent are extremely keen on further social legislation, but I would like to think that this is not as inevitable as rules on access to the profession, because the second social regulation per se is a very questionable piece of legislation, particularly on things like bans on bonus schemes and holidays. The FTA baulks at the introduction, for the first time in a Community sense, of an overall control on working time and spreadover. I know we have this in our own legislation but I think that most people in transport would agree that the 1968 legislation has caused a tremendous number of nonsenses. Look, •for example, at the number of exemptions that have had to be granted to specific industries simply because the Government insisted upon going for working time and spreadover limits. The FrA feels that the present philosophy of the European legislation, which is to say "so much driving time and so much rest" is the right answer to controlling drivers from the fatigue point of view. We would not only be worried at the idea of perpetuating the problem that spreadover and working time limits have produced in Britain, but at the implications of the preamble to the second social regulation which suggests that in the next stage we could be looking at something like eight hours' driving within nine hours' work within 10 hours' spreadover, and this would create very considerable problems. The really worrying aspect is the implication of where this second regulation is going to take us.
BC: Won't the entirely new economic situation put a brake on some socially argued legislation that clearly reduces productivity?
HF : I think there are the beginnings of signs that this is a factor but I can't honestly say that the attitude is yet affecting specific proposals. BC: But it makes some of the social regulations look even more cart-before-horse. Only now is the EEC Commission having professional studies made on driver fatigue, which suggests that driver limitations have really been based on a purely social, union-inspired attitude.
HF: Yes, in my view it is very largely social, which has always been very significantly different from the safety-based attitude in Britain. The FTA has argued, as have our opposite numbers in Europe, that if regulation is to be introduced for social reasons then transport should not be ahead of other areas of the economy; it should be part of a general Community social policy. Perhaps the Commission now feels that there !is some force in that argument and is turning its attention to seeing if the transport situation can be justified on safety grounds.
BC: Some people would say that railway protection has been a main factor in Continental pressure for working and driving hours limits in road transport.
HF: Yes, but I don't think there is any element of that so far as the Commission is concerned. I think they genuinely want to see a free market and fair competition. One of the most significant statements in this latest policy document is that any problems which the railways may have—and goodness knows they have got enough—should be solved not by restrictions on other modes of transport but by tackling the railway problem within the railways. They go on to say, in a devastating comment, that the financial problems of the railways have been no less in those countries that have restrictive policies directed at road transport than in those countries which have not.
BC: The Commission notion of a common transport market seems to include the idea that some omniscient body will be able to judge just when the market is becoming so distorted that capacity-limiting measures need to be taken. Do you have any idea of what they have in mind as a working basis for making such decisions?
HF: Presumably they would be influenced quite heavily in the case of road haulage by the relationship of the current level of rates to an economic rate, but that is pure guess work. Quite frankly, the ETA is sceptical about the workability of this control mechanism. The British haulage industry has always adapted through pure market forces to difficult times much more quickly and effectively than could possibly be achieved by examining historical statistics. And what are they going to do if they decide that there is, say, 20 per cent excess capacity (which I would have thought would have already been laid up anyway)? Are they going to control new entrants? That would take much longer to have any effect than the self-help action taken by hauliers. Then they propose —which I think is quite priceless—the possibility of restricting hauliers to operating only on certain days of the week. Well, have you ever heard anything so ridiculous in terms of productivity? I think the proposal i compromise between the q legitimate fears of count which operate a pn dirigiste control system countries like Britain wl have a very free system would hope that the final produces a very flex mechanism which leaves practical control in our c domestic hands.
BC: The Continental fears "distortion" seem to ignore point you made recently public that British induQ and British transport are the periphery of the Europ market and that the 1. approach which this entail; a disadvantage. Do you th the British haulier's long perience of working in a v competitive market will enough to counterbalance ti Especially in the free haul, market we have been talk about? And will confrontat with some of the more sopl ticated Continentals spur m British hauliers to go ah with the ideas of John We who wants to see a more viously responsible industry HF: I think there is an , tremely good future for 1 British haulage industry witl The prime proposal of latest Commission docu: would help not only what ieve is a very good market 3ritish haulage within the rnunity, but also traffic to Middle East and even the Curtain countries, which ssarily has to travel ugh the EEC. So I have y confidence that British age can compete and I dly think that because our age and our distribution basically efficient and corn:ive, freed of those competsuccessfully despite being the fringe of the market vaphically.
ost people would probably !e, however, that despite obvious raising of star).Is over recent years, it d do nothing but good if sport, and haulage in parlar, could be raised to even e professional levels. aking personally, I have r praise for the John Wells rt's recommendation that Ks should be taken by the istry—this is the keyer than by government, to raise standards or to isolate the cowboys. If that were achieved, I am quite certain that the PTA would be very happy to work with the RHA towards trying to ensure that, on the user's side, preferential treatment was given to people who met those standards.
BC: I can hear people saying that such a list would be used by some elements in trade and industry as a list to avoid; the people who talk about quality of service but who go round the corner to the lowest bidder when they want a load moved.
HF: The extent to which users are irresponsible in rate slashing, while it obviously happens, can be greatly exaggerated. All my evidence suggests that the large rump of goods that trade and industry put in the hands of hauliers is placed by people who know very well that it is in their own interest to have stable and efficient hauliers Who require a reasonable return for the job. There is a lot of publicity about the other sort, but I doubt how much effect that eventually has on the market.
BC: How long is it going to be before, say, an own-account manager begins to feel the effects of the sort of changes we've been talking about?
HF: Well, in the long term rather than the short. Even the proposals for the freer haulage market and the abolition of capacity controls talk about a period of transition, but there is no time given for this, and one fears that it might be so far away as to be virtually irrelevant to the present generation of transport managers—though obviously we shall press extremely hard for quicker results.
As to the commercial side, the increased opportunity as industry gears itself up for a permanent future in the Market will result in more traffic crossing the Channel and for many people that means a different and bigger job in managing transport. Certainly more sophisticated. However, whatever the changes, the requirements of service which have always been the dominant reason for using one's own transport will still be paramount—though every service improvement which the haulier makes gives him a better opportunity of capturing some of that traffic.
The biggest change is one which has already overtaken the transport manager: industrial relations now take an enormous slice of the manager's time and I can see no way in which that is not going to increase still further. You have only got to look at the purely domestic legislation that has just gone through to see the effect which that is going to have upon labour relations. Having said that, I would hope that the very good industrial atmosphere which so often prevails in own-account transport organisations will continue, but I think it is going to be much more of a management challenge to perpetuate it.