Legendary Figures
Page 67
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CURRENCY has receratly been given on two or three occasions to an interesting set of figures. They purport to be the result of an investigation by a manufacturer into the comparative cost of sending his goods by rail, by road haulage, and on his own vehicles. According to the report, if the railway proportion is taken as 100, the road haulage ratio is 60 and the C-licence figure 36.
Perhaps the story is a legend. It has all the hallmarks of one. In each instance, the manufacturer is described, rather vaguely, as "an industrialist of my acquaintance," or as "a firm with which I am connected." On the other hand, it must be admitted that the people who quote the figures should be well able to distinguish rumour from fact. The latest reference I have traced is by Sir. Walter Puckey, chairman, Automation Consultants and Associated, Ltd„ in his paper to the Institute of Transport on the application of automation to transport.
Basis in Fact
Unfortunately, Sir Walter does not say where the figures come from, although he 'assembles a list of 19 authorities for sundry other facts and figures in his paper. Whether or not the anecdote is trtie is of no particular consequence. It does not even matter greatly whether the proportionate costs cited by Sir Walter have a basis in fact. What is important and should be made clear is that the figures have no value, and can be held to prove nothing.
There are altogether too many variables in the equation. The road haulage rates or estimates selected for the purpose may have been obtained-from operators not well lilted to do the work. They may deliberately have quoted an extravagant price because they were not interested. Very likely, also, the 'Manufacturer may have ignored several substantial items that should have been included in the reckoning of his own costs. He has no strong motive to be exact, if it means going to a great deal of trouble. •He has to meet the costs in any case, and their precise apportionment is secondary to the successful running of his business as a whole.
Gross Fallacy.
The professional. provider of transport often comes up against this difficulty. The fallacy is gross when the carowner claims that it is cheaper to drive to work than to Use public transport because his fuel bill is less than the fare. It is not so easy for the haulier to ehnvince his customers that his rates must enable him to show a profit over and above the cost of numerous items that they regard as overheads to be charged against their main activity.
Even if Sir Walter Puckey's client or associate has chosen his hauliers carefully, and has been scrupglousIy fair about. the expenses of his own transport department, there remains one almost insurmountable variable. Any comparison with professional operators must contain the assumption that concepts such as the ton-mile, normally used as indices of efficiency and economy, can apply in all circumstances.
They certainly do not fit a direct comparison between C-licence operation and the use of hauliers or the railways. Every manufacturer with his own vehicles is bound toatse them when it most suitshim, and to pass over only what traffic is left. He may depart from this principle on occasions, but it must influence him to some extent. The figures quoted by Sir Walter are more likely to indicate the degree of that influence in a given set of circumstances than to be a criterion of efficiency.
An extreme and imaginary case will show that the tonmile can be misused like any other abstraction. A manufacturer with seven tons of traffic a day and a 6-ton vehicle, has two customers, one' perhaps 70 miles away, with his premises next door to the source of the manufacturer's raw material, the other in a desolate spot with no chance of a return load within a radius of 50 miles.
The first customer takes a regular 6 tons a day, the other an equally regular 1 kr. Naturally the manufacturer uses his own vehicle for the first job, and employs a haulier for the ther. The haulage rate per ton-mite might well be 10 times the manufacturer's own carefully calculated cost, but there would be nothing unreasonable in the difference.
Magical Properties It may be thought that, with so great a torrent of statistics pouring out all the time, a few wrong ones here and there are no great matter. There are certain sequences of numbers, however, that have almost magical properties. Once written down, they are repeated over and over again. I can, imagine the simple but false equation of the anonymous manufacturer getting himself quoted in other learned papers besides Sir Walter Puckcy's, in Press articles, on television and in Parliament. Thus legends grow, and the truth in them is of little consequence.
Sir Walter was looking into the possibilities of automation in transport. The example, he slid, was not isolated, but he did not give any others. On the basis of three figures of doubtful provenance, and of still more doubtful validity, he proceeds to condemn the whole of the transport industry. He suggests he has found one reason why 80 per cent. of all, road goods vehicles operate under C licences. Inevitably, he suggests, more manufacturers are going to say: "Why should I put up with a much lower efficiency ill external transport than I tolerate inside?
Potent Effect If a simple set of three numbers can so bewitch the usually meticulous Sir 'Walter Puckey, may they not have a much more potent effect upon other people? Trade and industry may be taking seriously the Chancellor of the Exchequer's latest appeal for a reduction in prices. They will look even more closely than usual at proposals for increased rates, whether for road or rail transport. If they require an additional reason. for a refusal, they may choose to find it in a set of statistics that flatter them with the apparent proof that, mere amateurs as they are, they are nearly twice as efficient as road hauliers, and nearly three times as efficient as the railways.
Meanwhile, according to rumour, one or two M.P.s are trying to work up a demand for freedom to carry return loads for hire or reward on C heel-ices. They are certain, sooner or later, to get round to the figures given the apparent stamp of authority by an expert on automation.
A FACTUAL METHOD EIOR those concerned with assessing the relative costs of 1. ancillary and professional transport there is no better basis for calculation than " The Commercial Motor' Tables of Operating Costs," published by Temple Press Limited. Bowling Green Lane, London, E.G.!, at 3s. plus 6d. by post. For every category of goods vehicle there are figures for direct operating expenses, as well as recommended haulage charges which 'include Weightage 16 cover establishment costs and profit.