Mental Turn-round
Page 76
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THERE is some evidence that the campaign for quicker turn-round is beginning to make an impression. Here and there a transport manager is making perhaps a closer investigation than previously into the amount of time lost by vehicles arriving at his premises. Other companies are showing more willingness to agree that, if the vehicles have to wait longer than is necessary or reasonable, compensation ought to be paid.
If the campaign, by stressing the importance of turnround, is lending prestige to a transport department, this is all to the good. The impact is also being felt on many of the plans now taking effect all over Britain as part of National Productivity Year. Trade and industry, it is plain, had for the most part ignored the importance of transport in increasing productivity. ' There have already, been useful opportunities to correct this misapprehension.
Among the side effects of the campaign may, in due course, be reckoned its value in helping to clear up some of the other current misconceptions about road transport. It may not be surprising that many people have envisaged British Road Services and private hauliers as inveterate rivals, prepared to run each other into the ground. To such people it is a novelty that nationalized and independent transport should be prepared to work closely together. Anti-road propaganda has also encouraged the notion that operators have no conscience about leaving their vehicles in the way of other road users. It may come as a shock to learn that hauliers would be only too pleased to find delivery space off the street, to get rid of their burden and to send the vehicle away as soon as possible from the area of congestion.
• THE misconceptions, of course, go far. beyond these examples. Their erasure from, public consciousness is not
in any way made easier by the fact that they are full of contradictions. If there is such a thing as an " image " of the road transport operator, it is a very fragmented image. It does not help to say that transport is a very varied industry, for the public persist in condemning every lorry, its driver and its owner, for the faults of a minority, or even of a single vehicle.
• Adverse comment tends to obliterate the balanced and correct view. The astonishing outburst by Lord Lucas, in the course of which he asserted that practically every goods vehicle on the road was overloaded, will remain vivid in people's minds long after they have forgotten—if they even noticed the story, or bothered to read it—that a few days later a test in public of a new type of weighbridge revealed only a small proportion of overloaded vehicles.
In other cases, the public will serenely hold two contrary views at one and the same time. They will agree with every, epithet in a strongly worded article condemning the lorry driver as a monster who hogs the fast lane on a main road, travelling too quickly for the motorist who has to get out of his way and too slowly for the motorist wishing that there was room to overtake him. They will maintain equally fervently that for skill and courtesy the long-distance driver has no equal.
' Even on such matters as these the turn-round campaign may ultimately have some influence, if only by drawing attention to the importance of goods transport. So often the public, although they must be familiar enough with • lorries, tend to forget about them when planning for the B50
future. From the Ministry of Transport there has recently come the concept of the motorized city—and the word "motorization" has been coined to describe the process -leading tip to it. The public have assumed that the concept is mainly concerned with making adequate provision for cars, conveniently forgetting the other statement from the Ministry that commercial vehicles should have priority.
The road transport industry itself is not free from misconceptions. The causes may be the confusion created by the sharply varying public image, the persistence of attitudes of mind more appropriate to rail than to road, and the muddled thinking that so often characterizes debates on transport in Parliament, especially when party politics are introduced. Speakers on transport themes, often experts in their field, feel the need to justify themselves, to define their subject, to separate it from what they may regard as harmful associations. In so doing, they fall into the same verbal confusion as the politicians
SOME interesting examples were provided last week in a paper read by Mr. J. A. McMullen, head of the central transport department of I.C.I. Much of what he said was original and worth hearing. It was only the occasional cliche that paradoxically failed to ring true. Fortunately, the general validity of his argument was not affected, but an examination of One or two of his phrases may throw some light on the failure of the public to appreciate the significance of road transport.
Mr. McMullen pointed out, correctly enough, that transport was a service, but he went on to add that it was "not an end in itself ". His purpose in saying this was to counter the idea that there should be direction of traffic by the Government. Unfortunately, the expression has little meaning. Production no more than transport is an end in itself. Both are required before the end can be achieved. It is just this point that the turn-round campaign is trying to make, to break down the obstinately persistent idea that transport is a thing apart and need not be taken into consideration when plans are being made to boost productivity.
The subject of Mr. McMullen's paper was "The. user's choice ", and he began with the firm statement that the user should have the freedom to choose. At a later stage he called for a proper realization of the importance of the public services, by which he appeared to mean the railways. In case the point should be overlooked, he suggested that it should be put .to the user at once so that he could exercise his choice in "his own and the national interest ".
Presented in this way, the contradiction is plain. If there is indeed a national interest which is different from that of the user, then his insistence on his right to choose seems merely anti-social. It would seem that Mr. McMullen has fallen into the Lord Stonharn heresy that there is a Platonic ideal interest somehow different from the sum total of the individual interests of which it is composed, and that there also exists somewhere a genius -or electronic computer capable of defining that interest. It is, of course, true, as Mr. McMullen says, that the trader does not always exereise his choice wisely, whether between two forms of transport or between his own vehicles and those of a haulier. The turn-round campaign, among its many, other advantages, may help to guide him.