At13 FREIGHT
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Licences should be fair
TRANSPORT MANAGERS' licences should be a flexible *system to be fair to the companies and the individual. They should also take the opportunity to put some real professionalism into the business.
Freight Transport Associalion president Mr Ian Phillips told the annual dinner of the East Riding Division that there were four basic objectives for getting the best out of the TML.
The first was to ensure that the system applied only to vehicles over 6 tonnes gross as laid down in the EEC directive.
"Why on earth has the Department proposed a demarcation point (3.5 tonnes gross) which is lighter and more restrictive than in other EEC countries?
"Do we really want to prostitute the thing to the point where the operator of a single light van can set himself up as a professional transport manager?" asked Mr Phillips.
He said that the system itself should ensure its own flexibility and should be such a system that it would suit the organisation of individual companies.
But Mr Phillips said that safeguards for the individual manager were also most important — operators must not be allowed to make a scapegoat out of the transport manager.
"Properly handled it could provide the springboard from which to launch a united attack on the whole question of professionalism in transport," said Mr Phillips.