No Customer Evidence Produced by Applicants: Partial Grant
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N attempt by Longton and North Staffs Transport, Ltd. to obtain additional vehicles without customer evidence of need, by basing the application on their inability to maintain their existing fleet, failed before Mr. W. P. James, the West Midland Licensing Authority, at Hanley last week.
Mr. G. C. Tinsdill, for the applicants, said two additional vehicles (an articulated outfit and a rigid, totalling 9+ tons unladen) were sought on B licence to carry general goods within 15 miles of base. The existing fleet consisted of 24 A-licensed vehicles, one on contract-A, and one on B licence. Since 1954 the company had built up a large and widespread business and customers' demands were such that it had been impossible to maintain the vehicles properly.
Documents were produced showing that although the whole fleet was being over-used, work was still in arrears. London trunk, vehicles had also to engage in collection and delivery Work, and the grant of two additional vehicles would relieve the pressure. ' • Objecting for the British Transport Commission, Mr. G. H. P. Beames submitted that if the pressure were due to customers' demands there must have been inconvenience and unless witnesses were called there was no case to answer.
Mr. James commented that as the application was worded it was foe additional vehicles for the transport of goods, but from the opening il appeared that the evidence would be purely on maintenance. A grant in 1959 of an additional vehicle was made on these grounds and he would require to know what it had been doing. If there was no evidence of need from customers the application should have been worded so as to allow the vehicles' use only when one or other of the existing fleet was off the road for maintenance or repair.
Mr. D. H. Dale, a director, said the gross earnings for January-February, 1960, were £20,949, which was a considerable increase on the same period in 1959. The vehicles were needed for local collection and delivery. They could have
created customer need by.maintaining the vehicles on schedule but had preferred to meet the demands as they arose. The whole fleet were three to nine days overdue for monthly maintenvice.
Questioned by Mr. Beames, he agreed that since 1958 three additional vehicles had been operated. Mr. Beames added that the 1959 application was for two Blicence vehicles for general goods within 10 miles, but when the company found their customer evidence was weak they played up the maintenance angle and were granted one vehicle. Again on this occasion, they had seen the danger signal and. had adopted the maintenance angle.
• After Mr. Tinsdill had intimated that they were prepared to accept a maintenance condition if there was a-grant, Mr. James said the vehicle granted for maintenance last year, without a strict condition, had largely been used operationally, judging by the decline in sub-contracting. The applicants had said that 90 per cent. of their case rested on maintenance, and he proposed to grant the articulated vehicle only, with a condition that it was to he used solely when one of the existing vehicles was off the road: for maintenance.
WITNESSES WAIT IN VAIN
ALTHOUGH a number of witnesses waited in court until 2.30 p.m., an application by McICelvie and Co. (Manchester), Ltd., to the North Western Licensing Authority was not heard last week because it was likely to take up at
least a full day. The case is being relisted.
The company wished to add six articulated outfits of 54 tons to their A licence, and vary their B licence by the addition of two vehicles of 81 tons and the deletion of two of tons.