RHA's new chairman hopes to give members better deal
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IF KEN ROGERS, the Road Haulage Association's new national chairman, is superstitious, then he will regard a recent hole in one in golf as a good omen for the next two years.
He is proud of the golfing achievement, and is proud too of the way in which RHA has developed since he became a vice-chairman four years ago, writes ALAN MILLAR.
Ken was 16 when he left school in Rugby in 1940 and joined the London Midland and Scottish Railway. He was to serve later in the Royal Air Force, then spent his only spell away from transport when he worked briefly in his family's plumbing and heating business.
His long association with Eastern England began soon after when he joined a Colch ester haulage contractor which was swallowed up almost immediately by the newly created Road Haulage Executive.
While outright nationalisation of long-distance haulage was a short-lived phase, Ken remained with British Road Services until its Bury St Edmunds depot was sold to Silver Roadways in 1963.
While with BRS, he rose from a humble traffic position to exercise managerial responsibility in the bulk, tipping, market work, haulage, international, tanker, smalls and contract fields. It was the contract side which projected the branch into its new hands, when Silver Roadways took over a contract for the British Sugar Corporation.
Silver Roadways asked him to join, and depots at King's Lynn, London and in the Midlands became his responsibility. Now Ken is a senior executive with Tate and Lyle, SR's parent group, but he has agreed a sabbatical for the duration of his periods of office with the RHA.
Tate and Lyle gains the benefit from any Ken Rogers )ublicity, and it knows it can .ely on his full-time service 'rom 1982 because, as he told me: "There is nothing more 'ex' than an ex-RHA national chairman."
Ken's devotion to the RHA dates back to the time he joined Silver Roadways. He was twice sub-area chairman for Bury St Edmunds, and was Eastern Area chairman in 1972.
Service on the main board of the Association was followed by his election as vicechairman four years ago. While he doesn't anticipate that the next two years will be easy, he is convinced that both he and his predecessor, John Silberrnann, were well broken in as vice-chairmen when they had to deputise for Jack Male during his period of office.
It was Ken who led RHA delegations to the inquiries held by the Office of Fair Trading, the Price Commission, and Professors Foster and Armitage. I think he guspects that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time when delegations were being drawn up, but he is nonetheless grateful for the experience.
. "I hope we got our points over to them. We have not come away dissatisfied from any of these inquiries, but we were not happy with the result of the OFT inquiry. The withdrawal of rate schedules was a sad blow to the industry. "I cannot see how it can be described as unfair to recommend rates or schedules because the customer still has the ultimate choice." And he adds that many major haulage customers have expressed their profound regret at the decision.
He sees his next two years at RHA being dominated by an expansion of the Association's membership services. "I am conscious that RHA is a trade association. Its purpose is to help the membership and to create a proper image for the industry."
RHA has been investigating several potential services which will come to fruition over the next two years. While the vehicle inspection scheme being considered for East Anglia (CM, April 19) is still some time away, he expects early developments on traffic exchange, and special vehicle warranty and insurance schemes, as well as a credit rating for vehicle repairs.
His philosophy is a simple one. "We can only retain and increase our membership by making it worth while. We have got to make RHA even more worth belonging to, and to make it such that hauliers cannot afford not to join."
For the industry as a whole, Ken sees potential conflict next winter on wages. He echoes John Silbermann's ccintroversial view that hauliers will have to stand firm against inflationary wage claims, but hopes that there will not be a repetition of the 1979 strike.
Costs, he says, are rising rapidly, and hauliers have not been able to recover all of them from their customers. He sees the industry being faced with the choice of increasing productivity or major closures and redundancies.
"The average driver, I am afraid, must realise that we are in a different ball game now. There is no Government there to soften the blows for either side, and it is up to each person to realise this. We have all got to face hard facts."
He doesn't expect the Government to introduce any Foster-inspired 0-licensing changes, but he does expect Armitage to propose an increase in weights, at least to 38 tonnes, if not 40 tonnes. It makes immediate sense to do this, he says, and it is interesting that some environmentalists expect the same outcome even if they do not want it.
The next two years are unlikely to see any more designated lorry routes, he predicts, but there will be a greater tendancy towards town centre lorry bans and Windsor-style cordons. He sees that as a "real problem" and is in no doubt that "the disease will spread."
There will also be more pressure on oil supplies which, he maintains, must be rationed so that non-transport consumers — heating and industry mainly — are turned over to coal or some other fuel. Transport cannot be converted easily to other fuels, and RHA will fight hard to put across this message: The combination of Ken Rogers' firm ambition and gentle courtesy should be great assets for RHA in the difficult but challenging years ahead.