Dutch peaks
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I found the vehicle manufacturers and transport operators in Amsterdam expressing very mixed feelings. The makers are smiling again because the last two months of 1975 and January this year were the best months for three years in truck sales; the market is at last moving.
On the other hand, hauliers are working under the handicap of a ban on new haulage licences for internal transport. This ban on new capacity licences (the operators are licensed according to their total carrying capacity) was imposed last May by the Dutch government because so many trucks were chasing so little business—and of course in Holland the own-account man is not allowed to carry for hire, so there is an enormous wasted capacity anyway.
On this ban, too, I found mixed feelings. One man told me that it had resulted in much-increased productivity—for instance double-shifting, because if you have a 100-ton-capacity licence you can move 200 tons daily over the same mileage by running the vehicles on two shifts. But another said he thought it had made very little difference yet, because there had been so much slack to take up.
Anyway, no one is hinting when the ban may come off, and the Dutch haulage industry is not making an official fuss, because the environmental lobby is now so strong there.