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Evaluation fact or fiction
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Some of the factors that can underlie the roadworthiness of a vehicle.
TECHNICAL skill and experience are obviously the immediate necessity for putting an unroadworthy vehicle back into service. The continuing drive by Ministry of Transport examiners has only too pointedly underlined this necessity. But whilst immediate requirements must take priority, it is also necessary to reassess maintenance policy and allied factors if there is to be a lasting improvement in the mechanical condition of operators' fleets.
Before I begin considering specific aspects of the subject it is as well to mention right away that transport differs from other industries in that it operates on public highways and therefore has wider obligations to the public at large than those industries which are primarily contained within the walls of a factory. Additionally, because transport is a service industry there is an inherent difficulty in determining operational standards.
Whilst there would be relatively little disagreement as to what constituted a good (as opposed to a bad) service I can imagine wide disagreement as to what was considered reasonable or unreasonable. Thus, in hearings of licensing cases it has often been contended that it is unreasonable to maintain that there was a lack of available vehicles just because local operators could not supply them immediately in response to a telephone request. Whilst many would agree with this contention, disagreement would creep in when an attempt was made to be more specific and claim that six, 12 or 24 hours' notice was a reasonable advance request by a trader to a haulier.
Increased productivity in trade and industry in recent years has undoubtedly accelerated the demand for greater urgency in the collection and delivery of products. Coupled to this have been the effects of ever-increasing prices, making it even more necessary for the manufacturer to reduce the amount of goods in the pipeline so as to limit the capital outlay involved. Whilst these trends are understandable, they have the adverse effect, so far as the road transport operator is concerned, of making the job of providing an adequate service still more exacting.
And there is a close relationship between the demands of an exacting service and the standard of roadworthiness of the vehicles which provide just that service.
In a manufacturing industry, if a customer requires a better product than at present being supplied the manufacturer would naturally use the occasion to negotiate a revised price for the new product. These negotiations would be facilitated by the fact that there would be a physical and discernible difference between the two products.
In transport, unfortunately, the difference in standard of service can often be apparently marginal in outward appearance, although the effect on cost can be considerable. In a competitive market demands for urgent deliveries at inconvenient times (and often to outlandish destinations) have to be met and form the daily routine of many transport managers. But somewhere along the line, whether by cross-subsidization or other means, the true cost of all operation has eventually to be met.
It is unfortunate that through sheer pressure of demands on a transport service one of the other means has been the continued deferment of previously scheduled preventive maintenance. In the early stages in such a situation, it is virtually impossible for anyone to prove that a servicing scheduled to take place on a certain day or at a certain mileage cannot temporarily be postponed without detriment to the vehicle. Too often, however, what is a relatively simple postponement ultimately leads to virtually the complete breakdown of a preventive maintenance system as such, and ultimately to the literal breakdown of the vehicles involved.
To forestall such a situation it is necessary to establish from the outset that many decisions in connection with transport operation and maintenance of vehicles are—in the final resort—a personal opinion and decision of the person concerned. But having ensured that the calibre of the person making such an evaluation is the best obtainable in the prevailing circumstances then it is essential that such evaluation should be accepted. Too often an attitude is adopted whereby because such evaluations as are involved in deciding whether a vehicle is fit for service cannot be quantified precisely, they must necessarily be suspect. In this respect the public obligation which an operator has as a road user, in common with others, will increasingly be put to the test as official examination of vehicles increases in both scope and intensity. In the extreme case of a serious accident, it could be that in the near future what has been a bone of contention internally within the road transport industry for many years-namely the rival claims between traffic and engineering departments-might be brought out into the open. Alternatively, those responsible for initiating systems of budgetary control involving the roadworthiness of vehicles might also be involved if a company's vehicle were in an accident.
Incidentally, the reasonableness or otherwise of a particular company's level of permitted maintenance expenditure may soon itself be under scrutiny with the growing adoption of interfirm comparison of costs, and more recently the Ministry of Transport announcement of its own cost survey. If in such an event the level of maintenance expenditure allowed was shown to be totally inadequate then the legal responsibility must be placed where it belongs-on the shoulders of those who have finally determined that particular level of expenditure. In a continuing drive to reduce costs efficient companies endeavour to limit, if not eliminate, those subsidiary "stocks" which it seems almost second nature for many otherwise conscientious staff to acquire to ease the flow of their particular job. The cost to a company of such private "insurance" policies can be considerable. But although this is a commendable procedure with physical stocks, it can have dangerous implications when applied to vehicle maintenance and replacement.
The road passenger industry, because of the larger operating units which applied from the outset, has practised preventive maintenance for many years. As a result operators have naturally become highly skilled in the application of preventive maintenance schemes, many of which have since been adopted in principle (if not in detail) by the larger haulage companies and ancillary users. More recently there has been criticism within the road passenger industry itself, and possibly to a lesser extent in the goods field, that previously conceived standards of preventive maintenance were excessively high and therefore excessively costly. But even where this was shown to be true it is a misconception to conclude that this invalidated the whole principle of preventive maintenance. Rather did it pinpoint an excess based on an initial misjudgment or—more likely—failure to make adequate adjustments as improvements in vehicle and component reliability occurred as a result of continuing, if not dramatic, improvements in design and manufacture.
The whole concept of preventive maintenance is based on the assumption that it is just not a practical proposition to run vehicles deliberately through to the point of breakdown. A reliable service is a prerequisite of virtually every transport requirement, so that some margin of mechanical roadworthiness is necessary to ensure this. Indeed the remarkable success of the road transport industry has largely been built up on its ability to provide a reliable door-to-door service with that degree of flexibility which varying customer requirements demand.
It would therefore be a blatant example of getting one's priorities wrong if the insistence on a particular maintenance policy on economic grounds undermined the very service which the organization was set up to provide.
The difficulty, of course, arises in determining just what is a reasonable margin appropriate to the particular service provided. But some margin there must be if forward traffic planning is to have any sound basis. Moreover it is essentially an engineer's decision as to what that margin should be and this is an aspect of transport operation in which inter-departmental co-operation is essential to efficient organization.
In the relationship of vehicle maintenance to overall operation it is essential at the outset to avoid being pedantic in the matter of terms used. Although the COMMERCIAL MOTOR Tables of Operating Costs have been published for over 50 years (and correspondingly the ten items of operating costs have been in common use for the same period) it should not be overlooked that the segregation of total operating costs into ten items is arbitrary. Several costs are, of course, inter-related. For example the initial outlay will be reflected in the interest charge whilst the type of vehicle in relation to its quality will have a bearing on its life, which in turn
will affect maintenance and replacement policy.
The actual terms used to denote the ten items have stood the test of time but nevertheless have to be taken in the context of commercial vehicle costing. Thus the very term "maintenance" is used in a practical sense and is commonly understood as such. Theoretically if a new vehicle were "maintained" in its initial condition then the item of depreciation, leading ultimately to vehicle replacement, would.not arise.
Ignoring the factor of obsolescence it might be possible as an engineering exercise to apply just such a level of maintenance but, by the total absence of such a policy being applied by operators, it is obviously not a practical proposition. Therefore although the purist might contend that it was an illogical approach, for practical purposes one has to accept that despite a maintenance policy adequate to keep a vehicle in service in a roadworthy condition, some continuing deterioration occurs. This is, of course, provided for by the item of depreciation through which funds are accumulated to allow ultimate vehicle replacement.
Consequently, in addition to some margin of mechanical standard sufficient to allow a reliable service to be provided, there is this continuing deterioration to be contended with. Here again, it is largely within the province of an engineer to determine at what stage no further deterioration can be accepted relative to the service to be provided, so that vehicle replacement becomes necessary.
The qualification was just made regarding the service to be provided. Apart from the actual mechanical condition of a particular vehicle at any time, other factors have to be allowed for. Whatever the type of operation the public obligation of any user of the highway to ensure that only roadworthy vehicles are operated always remains. But in addition the commercial vehicle operator must vary his judgment as to whether a vehicle is fit for service dependent upon the terrain of operation, the wear and tear inherent in particular traffics, for example in tipping operation and the urgency and level of service demanded by customers offering particular types of traffic. '