AT THE HEART OF THE ROAD TRANSPORT INDUSTRY.

Call our Sales Team on 0208 912 2120

Simple as A B C

13th June 1952, Page 53
13th June 1952
Page 53
Page 53, 13th June 1952 — Simple as A B C
Close
Noticed an error?
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.

Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

Keywords :

LL the transport experts have spluttered at the idea

of the Prime Minister, who is not usually con sidered to be one of their number, reading the House of Commons a lecture on transport economics. Unlike some of the experts, Mr. Churchill does not claim infallibility. "It is no part of my case that I am always right," he said when reminded that he once suggested nationalizing the railways.

It is easy to sympathize with the anguish of the experts when so many of the assumptions they have cherished for years past are so lightly discarded. Their training tends to make them traditionalists. The succession of portentous reports over the past quarter of a century makes ever longer and heavier the chain linking the experts to the industry they love. They become railbound or road-bound, and distrustful of revolutionary proposals.

Sense from Mr: Churchill The Prime Minister's brisk approach gives the impression that he has devoted at least five minutes of earnest thought to the transport problem. Even if this were the case, he starts with the advantage that the five minutes were stolen from 1952 and not from 25 or 50 years earlier. On reading his speech one has the uneasy feeling that there is something wrong. It is not easy to put one's finger on the flaw in the argument, but it must, of course, be there. Only after further thought does the suspicion deepen that the unaccustomed feeling may really be because the Prime Minister is talking sense.

All he has done is to take the present licensing system, with the Transport Act superimposed, and subject it to the scrutiny of Transport Man. Now, we all know that the plain man's opinion no longer counts. Human affairs have become all too complicated for his facile judgment to have any value. The fact remains that, when Mr. Churchill puts on the spectacles of Transport Man and looks at what is happening to-day, it appears to him to be sheer folly.

A Matter of Comparison There are, he points out, 41,000 nationalized and unrestricted road vehicles, less than 5 per cent. of the country's total. There are 110,000 vehicles operated under A or B licences andfor the most part restricted to a radius of 25 miles. The purpose of the limit is presumably to protect the traffic of the British Transport Commission. But since the war the number of C-licensed vehicles has increased from less than 400,000 to more than 800,000.

To the Prime Minister in his capacity of Transport Man it appears self evident that the traders concerned, or a good many of them, have acquired vehicles for themselves because they are unwilling to use the nationalized service and cannot find hauliers under free enterprise able to carry the traffic. Were the hauliers available, many C licences would not need to he taken out, and it would often be preferable in the national interest for hauliers to handle the business.

As the C-licensed vehicle may carry only the goods of its owner, it often travels with a part load and comes back empty. This means that more fuel, more labour and more vehicles are 11R(.11 than is necessarv—and they

are all scarce commodities these days. More vehicles than are likely to be required under a rational system are put upon the already over-burdened roads.

Has the Prime Minister correctly diagnosed the reason why more and more traders use their own vehicles in preference to those of the public providers of transport? Some C-licence holders can show without difficulty that the use of their own vehicles is the only practicable way of conducting their business. Many others had never gone to the trouble of buying their own lorries until nationalization. The Socialists may ascribe the changed attitude to pique or political prejudice, but the more likely explanation must be that the nationalized service is not what trade and industry Want and that the preferred haulier under free enterprise is no longer permitted to give a comprehensive service.

The curve or industrial production has flattened out during the past year, but the number of C-licensed vehicles continues to increase at the rate of approximately 8 per cent, per annum. The number operated under A or B licences does not rise at all. The fleet of the Road Haulage Executive appears to be somewhat less than the total of the vehicles taken over.

Object Missed Now is the time for somebody to look at the transport situation with the eye of innocence. Whatever justification there might be for all the complicated legal procedure built up round the 1933 Act, and subsequently the 1947 Act, lay in the need to preserve the railways against undue competition from road users. As Mr. Churchill pointed out, the aim is not being achieved, but the procedure is still being followed with the futile frenzy of the soldiers who went on defending the Maginot Line when the enemy was halfway across France.

In the 1930s, the wealth of the world seemed illimitable. The chief danger appeared to be over-production, which was held to be responsible for unemployment and slumps. It may have seemed good sense to suggest that vehicles should be restricted and not allowed to carry all the traffic that was available. Since the war the situation is different. Vehicles are scarce and the home quota becomes less each year. In such circumstances, the logical course should be to let the available vehicles. have 'as much freedom to carry as much traffic as possible. The Socialists, however, constrained one section of the road haulage industry even more than before and tethered the other to the railways. Left free to expand, the C-licence holders successfully exposed the Socialists' theory for the absurdity that it is.

If I have correctly followed the way in which his mind was working, the Prime Minister would probably agree that the extent to which the number of C-licensed vehicles increases or decreases provides a rough-andready formula for estimating the efficiency of public transport. One rather doubtful device which some of the SocialistS favour is to impose restrictions on the C-licence holder. The better method is to provide for the rejuvenation and expansion of the public road carrier so that the trader no longer feels the need to put his own vehicles on the road. This is the aim of the White Paper, and as an aim it is unexceptionable.


comments powered by Disqus