CEGB favour unlikely
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RHA director-general Freddie Plaskett (CM, March 16) thinks that coal hauliers' moderate charges during the miners' strike will encourage the CEGB to move more coal by road permanently. Charging market rates, as I recommended (CM, March 2), he equates with holding a pistol to the CEGB's head".
This surely over-estimates the influence of gratitude in financial matters. The Government has even more reason than the CEGB to be grateful to coal hauliers. This did not prevent a vast tax increase on rigid tippers only a few weeks after the strike ended.
On television the CEGB chairman does not strike me as a sentimental man. (Nor, as an electricity consumer, would I wish him to be.) Why should he not go back to using trains where these are more economical?
The board has a large investment in the system, one of the very few freight areas in which rail is often more efficient than road. It knows that hauliers will still be there as an alternative if railwaymen are again foolish enough to disrupt the system. And Mr Plaskett now confirms publicly that hauliers are so anxious for the work that they will not charge what the market would bear. I think he has dropped one of the bricks whose manufacture he suggests should be my next occupation.
Far too many operators do not know their true costs. And the proportion in the tipping sector is probably higher than most. So when a major customer starts commending them for their "reasonable" charges the alarm bells ought to start ringing.
If you, Mr Editor, ever commend the fees I charge for my articles I shall ask for more. I think coal hauliers should work on the same principle. JANUS Middlesex