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Counting the cost

12th July 1968, Page 23
12th July 1968
Page 23
Page 23, 12th July 1968 — Counting the cost
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

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No operator needs to be told that costs have risen steeply in the past year; as Sam Buckley remarks in introducing the new CM Tables on page 60 of this issue, seldom since our guide to costs was first produced in 1911 have there been so many changes (inevitably upwards) as have taken effect in the past 12 months. But it is alarming to see just how sharp the increases have been in recent years. Taking a typical example, a 7-ton platform lorry with diesel engine, averaging 600 miles a week, cost 15.36d per mile to run in 1958, 16.39d in 1963 and now costs 21.73d per mile in 1968. The overall increase in 10 years is more than 41 per cent, but the significant fact is that in the first five years of this comparison the rise was only 6 per cent; in the second five years it was more than 32 per cent.

Taxation accounts for a very large part of the rise, not only through successive swingeing increases in excise duty but also through fuel taxes, which have added nearly 8d a gallon to dery in 10 years. To find a commercial vehicle which can be operated today for about the same pence per mile figure as the 7-tonner in 1958, one has to go right down the scale to the 2/3-ton level. In these circumstances, and with rates not only lagging behind cost increases but actually declining for some traffics, the haulier has been able to remain in business only by taking advantage of larger vehicles to keep his ton-mile costs down or, as so many small hauliers have done, by squeezing nine days' work into every seven and running constantly on the ragged edge of trouble.

Not only will current and impending regulations, if enforced as predicted, threaten to wipe out such marginal operations, but the effects of the Transport Bill will be to intensify competition between private hauliers, and between them and own-account operators.

The pressures are all in one direction, and the urgent message is that the man —whether he be haulier or trader—who does not know what his transport operations are costing is living vulnerably in a fool's paradise. Quite apart from the commercial need for proper costing of operations, by the end of next year the Licensing Authorities will probably be calling for castings to substantiate licence applications; the man who does not know his costs, or understand how to calculate and apply them, will be in an impossible situation.

Unknown quantity

Once upon a time there was a Transport Bill. That was before the House of Lords used its knives and scissors with almost gleeful abandon and cut the thing to shreds. As we implied two weeks ago, the baby may well have gone out with the bath water, but that was the sort of fate for which this preposterous piece of legislation was simply asking.

Will the Lords stand firm when the measure is returned to them after the Commons have reinstated the cuts? Probably not, but in the meantime the Lords have forced some necessary commonsense amendments that are likely to stand. And the sheer size of the majority by which measures such as quantity licensing were thrown out must surely make this administration stop and think before it forces pointless burdens upon transport at a time when the economy needs every little upward shove it can get.

Tags

Organisations: House of Lords
People: Sam Buckley

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