Changing World
Page 41
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ONE of the many paradoxes of life is the truth of the phrase: "To stand still is to go back." The business that is content to stay where it is„ regardless of whether changing conditions require it to alter or adapt, does, indeed, eventually lose ground to its more lively competitors and therefore, in effect, it "goes back."
Few people wOuld complain that the road haulage field is one where change seldom takes place. The operators, over the past 30 years (and particularly over the past 13 years), have not only had to change and adapt to suit very considerably different economic business requirements; they have also had to take in their stride the last war, nationalization, and then denationalization. There is always, it seems these days, some major Government action in the air which will affect road operators.
, Despite these continua!, surging pressures from without, the road haulage industry has built itself up to the present stage where it is the acknowledged major carrier of goods in the United Kingdom. It contributes, in taxation, a very substantial portion of the Government's housekeeping money each year. This premier position has been achieved by offering a better service than anyone else could do because it is, in the end, the quality of its service that makes or breaks a haulage concern.
Each year, in this post-nationalization period at least, the Road Haulage Association has grown in stature as the representative of British hauliers. Its conferences have become a forum for active discussion by hauliers of the problems currently weighing most heavily on their minds.
The 1961 conference opens next Monday in Brighton with one major change, in that Mr. D. L. Munby, the Oxford Reader in Transport Organization and Economics, is to give a paper. His agile, incisive mind can usually be relied upon to produce one or two major points for discussion.
This invitation to an expert observer to discuss some aspect of haulage strengthens the value of the conference and will, it must be hoped, become an annual feature of the R.HA. conferences On some occasions, there have been complaints that the resolutions for discussion at the R.H.A. conferences have been weak, indecisive or repetitious. There is no point in blaming the Association for this; it is the members who frame the resolutions for discussion. However, it does not seem that such will be the case this year. The resolutions for the 1961 conference—abbreviated in numbers to make room for Mr. Munby's paper—are on the whole solid and should produce worth-while discussion, which is possibly the most valuable part of the business sessions at any conference.
The resolutions, with one exception, are related to home affairs and as such are probably a fair indication of operators' thinking. The one exception wisely draws the Government's attention to the stature of road haulage and the need to accord it proper value in any discussions on international transport agreements.
Is this enough, or are road hauliers slightly in danger at the moment of that fatal stand-still, of not moving with this changing world? Apart from anything else, two major forces will, over the next decade, be exerting a major influence. These are freer movement between this country and the Continent, and the carriage of freight by air or hovercraft.
All hauliers must think seriously on these two aspects of life. Neither is fantasy; both are capable of swift realization and of having a very considerable impact on British road haulage. International movements are now engaging the R.H.A.'s attention. The Commercial Molar suggests, particularly in the light of views expressed in an article on page 344 about air freight work, that this subject should also be given very serious consideration by all forward-thinking hauliers