FEAR OF TRYING?
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• Anyone who thinks that cabotage will he removed from the 1992 agenda if they can only protest loudly enough is kidding themselves. Whether Britain or any other country in the European Community dislikes it is fast becoming irrelevant.
The question mark over cabotage (the system whereby a haulier from one Community country can carry out domestic haulage in another) is no longer how to stop it, but how to take advantage of it.
The dire warnings about cabotage, particularly from the Transport and General Workers Union have received no shortage of publicity. Now the chairman of the House of Commons Transport Select Committee has jumped on the bandwagon, claiming that Community operators will steal Britain's domestic business and "put thousands of UK jobs at risk".
Commercial Motor might be missing the nub of the argument, but what exactly do these Cassandras think that British operators will be doing when the Single European Market arrives in three years' time? One thing's for sure: they won't be sitting around watching foreign operators take away their livelihood.
If the European market is truly harmonised by the end of 1992 — and that is a very big "if" — UK operators will be more than capable of defending their home market. Not by reducing rates to stave off an attack from cut-price Continentals eager to get any load, as long as it's heading towards a port — but by competing on service, reliability, experience, professionalism. . .in short, by using all the attributes they need to survive right now.
What they don't need is to be protected from external pressures by artificial barriers, or cosseted from everyday competition with internal restrictions. One only has to look at the German haulage industry to see where that road leads. Were the UK to make a brief stand on cabotage, only to acquiesce at a later date, then cabotage would hit us that much harder. Obviously the operators who will be best placed to take advantage of cabotage, in the short term at least, will be ilk hauliers and those companies with Continental connections. Judging by CM's Business News pages those companies are already moving rapidly towards a liberalised market, either by forging links with Continental companies or by aggressive acquisitions.
Cabotage in itself is not a threat: in a truly liberalised and harmonised market there is no reason why British operators should fear it anymore than their Continental counterparts.
As the saying goes, you have nothing to fear but fear itself.