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Time for protest?
Page 80
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Janus comments
NOT ONLY in the world of sport is the amateur tending to disappear. The situation is coming in road transport also when the man who is not a fully equipped and dedicated professional will be regarded as of no account and thrust beyond the pale.
That at least is the impression left by the industry's spokesmen. Whichever one of them may claim the credit for being the first to hail the dawn of professionalism in road transport the rest of them were not long in following the lead.
The historical economist or economic historian who will chronicle the strange events of these days will not fail to note—after the manner of his kind—that the people who talk about professionalism do not always mean the same thing. Sometimes the distinction is between the carrier for hire or reward who makes his sole living from his vehicles—and to whom genuine professionalism is therefore a matter of survival—and the carrier on own-account who can stay in business even if his transport department is not well run.
At other times the comparison is with other occupations or professions to which entry is restricted usually by examination. The need to win on merit an operator's licence or a transport manager's licence is said to put the carrier in the same category as the doctor, the lawyer and the accountant.
If this is really the direction in which the Transport Act is pointing it is time that the anti-academics made their protest. Obviously all road operators and would-be operators can derive benefit from training and education and are foolish if they do not at least examine the opportunities now being offered. But it must not be supposed that the untutored man will inevitably fail.
Leave room Room ought to be left for him. From so many other trades and industries he is being shut out except as an employee. Road transport has offered one of the few openings now left to the man of modest attainments and the desire to be his own master in however small a sphere.
Sometimes he has also shown himself to be unscrupulous and indifferent to standards of road safety. Legislation directed against this danger was justified. There must be regret if it excludes the conscientious as well as the undesirable.
The man who has difficulty in assimilating instruction from lectures or from books may still have a good deal of practical ability or a good nose for profitable traffic. The much maligned road transport "pioneers" were often of this type. Their successors may not be so numerous but can play a useful if declining part in the industry.
Fears that they will not be allowed to do so may be exaggerated. They arise chiefly when the curtain is occasionally lifted on some of the coming regulations that will define more precisely what the operator has to do; or when schemes are devised which make it possible for operators to test the temperature in advance.
From the little that has so far been heard the temperature was not much to the liking of those operators who took part in the experiment with the draft application form for an operator's licence. The Ministry of Transport who conducted the experiment will certainly take heed of the reaction and the final form will be different in many ways.
Other experiments carried out by the industry itself have had to be based on what information is available and have been made a little more difficult by the knowledge that some of the rules will be changed before they are issued in statutory form. The point was neatly illustrated in the residential course organized by the Freight Transport Association and reported in Commercial Motor last week.
Under the terms of the Act the trader with a single C licence will have to seek a separate operator's licence in each traffic area where he has a depot. The point had to be taken into account in the exercises which were included in the course but representations have been made to the Ministry and there may be some relief by the time that licences have to be sought.
Other difficulties are more intractable. Mr. R. E. G. Brown, the FTA's controller of special projects, suggested as a principle that an operator should first set up the organization that seemed right for his business and should only then consider how to fit in the requirements laid down by the new legislation.
Simple precept He soon found himself facing the problem of keeping to this simple precept. One of the groups taking the course had planned a transport department in which the engineer was entitled to override the transport manager. Mr. Brown thought this unwise or impracticable when it was remembered that the transport manager, however humble his role in the undertaking, would have to hold a licence which could be taken away if vehicles were found seriously defective.
But the status of the engineer is fundamental in any transport business. If it has to be determined by what is in the Act then the whole structure of the undertaking is being built on legislation from the outset.
No deliberate criticism could show up more clearly the possible snags in the plan for a transport manager's licence. For the small unlettered operator there is a sinister hint of what is meant by so much talk of "professionalism". If he himself stays aloof from the academic scene he will ultimately be required to have at least one manager with a recognized qualification and with considerable power over the running of the business.
At least the problems and discussions have so far been kept reasonably simple. It would be a bad day if the over-sophisticated techniques used in more general transport inquiries ever leaked into road goods transport.
Complications Complications arise when the whole of transport is under consideration. There are so many interests involved, ranging from the company in the US who adopt a certain size of container to the local authority that decides to ban lorries from a certain area. There are several competitive modes of transport. Road users are at the mercy of innumerable outside forces. .They have little say even in the building of the roads on which their vehicles run.
As a result of these outside factors the operator, whether large or small, has found himself one of the main characters in an impressively large piece of legislation with more to follow. After all the trouble taken to set out his problems it may seem base ingratitude as well as perilous to continue running his business by homespun methods.
He fears WS own ignorance without always being clear what he should do about it. He still has his own opinions. They make good sense to him but he hardly dares subscribe to them unless they are expounded by somebody else in language he can hardly understand.
It.is the fairly large operator for whom the courses and seminars mostly cater. The small man may ultimately be in more need of help and advice. The Transport Act gives broad hints towards the solution of some of his problems but he must still be in doubt even on so crucial a point as the role in his business of the officially licensed transport manager.
Neither the small operator nor his transport manager is likely to describe himself as a professional. The larger operators and perhaps particularly the C-licence holders —in the person of the director or manager responsible for transport—are natuqlly keen on professional status.
It is in some ways a pity that this reasonable ambition has become entangled with legislation. The declared intention is for the official transport manager's examination to be as simple as possible so that it would indeed be a dull candidate who failed. The higher grades would be useful in furthering a man's career but would not be obligatory.
Insofar as there is a "professional," therefore, the title will tend to be attached to the statutory licence. Operators with higher qualifications will be in no different position than those who have passed the examinations of the existing academic bodies. The temptation may be in due course to agitate for a higher basic standard in order to keep the licence exclusive.