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Good fences made good neighbours
by Janus
0 NE effect of the Transport Act 1968 has been to widen, or perhaps rather to illuminate more clearly, the gap between the haulier and the ancillary user. Now that one operator's licence is the same as another, the need has increased to emphasize the very different purposes for which it has been acquired. As a consequence, open disagreement is more frequently replacing what used to be strenuous arguments behind the scenes.
Once upon a time hauliers, singly or collectively, would make announcements on rates without expecting public comment. Whether the customer accepted what was put to him was another matter. In most cases, he was considered to be in a sufficiently strong position to look after his own interests.
THE Prices and Incomes Board, whose prolonged swansong is just beginning, made the first move towards changing the situation. It told trade and industry, probably much to their surprise, that they needed protection from profiteering hauliers, and should not accept a rates increase without investigation and protest. A few of the more naive traders took this advice over-seriously and refused to pay the higher charge, citing the Board as authority. Most of the remainder ignored the Board and carried on exactly as they had done previously.
In other words, they treated an application from a haulier in the same way as from any other supplier. They looked at his claim with a mixture of suspicion and sympathy, and in the end reached agreement. They were not above looking at their experience with their own vehicles in order to test the figures which he produced; but in the end they accepted that he was running a different kind of business from their own. In his own line, he was the professional, and he had the professional's licence to prove it.
THis particular credential is no longer available. The customer's licence is as . good as the haulier's and can be used for the same purpose. In theory, at least, the trader is entitled to take away—or at least to try to take away—the whole of the haulier's traffic and not merely his own. Although few traders seriously consider exercising this new right, its existence is one of the reasons for the tendency towards an open challenge of road haulage announcements on costs and charges.
That the same licence is now made to do for the haulage and the own-account functions was almost bound to bring any conflicts into the public eye. The haulier and the trader are still on different sides of a fence which has been broken down. The convenient boundary line that it created made it much easier to agree on almost every subject. Even the occasional disagreement could hardly be described as a quarrel. Good fences made good neighbours.
Much has changed since then. There are clashes of opinion that cannot be disguised. The hauliers, for example, persist in seeing the virtues of a restrictive system which makes it hard for the newcomer to enter. They applaud any attempt by a Licensing Authority to insist on comprehensive information from an applicant about his facilities and his financial resources and even the traffic he proposes to carry.
ASTRONG argument in favour of this procedure is that it helps to keep out of road transport aspirants who are ignorant of the problems that would face them or have no regard for standards of safety. Own-account operators agree with the haulier on this point, but their enthusiasm is much less than his. They are not against increasing the number of operators and would even welcome it in so far as it widened their own range of choice and increased competition in the road haulage industry.
An increasing number of trade associations are likely soon to be offering advice to their members on the best procedure to adopt for obtaining an operator's licence. There was no demand for this service when it was a simple matter to obtain a C licence. The associations are likely to emphasize that the new type of licence is worth having in that it enables the holder to carry for hire or reward. The privilege helps to compensate for the extra trouble now required.
HAULIERS cannot be pleased at this development. They have already suggested that stricter standards should be laid down for the applicant who wishes to do more than carry his own goods. In spite of the very slight chance of success, they will continue to press the point, and the traders through their associations will just as strongly resist.
There is an equally direct clash of opinion about the elimination of the small goods vehicle from any licensing control. Almost all the small vans are used by traders on own-account, who are naturally pleased that they do not have to go through the traffic courts nor their vehicles through the Government testing stations.
HAULIERS have no objection to the use by traders of vanS for their own traffic. What they fear is the increasing use of these small vehicles for hire or reward. Once again the road safety argument is entirely on the hauliers' side. The van is smaller than the lorry, but it is no more immune from accidents. In fact, it is marginally more likely to be involved. Even if it is to be spared the full testing station procedure, at least it ought to be examined a little more rigorously than at present.
In these matters, logic is not enough. The hypocritical campaign against the so-called "killer" lorry is sufficient proof of this. In resisting any closer control over vans, trade and industry have general support and the comfortable assurance that no government is likely to amend the law in the way that the hauliers wish.
ALTHOUGH there are important issues on which the two sides of the road transport industry disagree, there are many more on which they must work together, or at any rate in harmony, if they are to resist pressure from Government, local authorities and the public. Clearly, the Minister for the Environment, Mr Peter Walker, has not turned down the idea that heavy lorries should in due course be banned from residential areas in major cities.
News has been given in the House of Lords of a research study into the distribution of goods in towns by vehicles of a size more suited to the conditions. There are proposals that depots should be provided on the outskirts of towns where bulk loads can be broken down for transmission on small vehicles. It was even suggested at one stage that these depots should be incorporated in the plans for facilities where lorries can be parked at night and drivers can obtain food and accommodation.
0 PERATORS have realized the implications of this ingenious plan whereby they would help provide a rod for their own back. The idea is impracticable; it would be prohibitively expensive; there are obvious security risks; and there would certainly not be the expected easing of congestion.
In spite of these drawbacks, some local authority or another may decide to introduce some such scheme accompanied by extensive restrictions on the heavy lorry. Once it has been adopted in one town, others will follow the example. The opposition will become all the harder. It is essential that the resistance already building up among operators should become united on this matter at least, even if on some other matters separate action has to be taken and operators may even disagree among themselves.