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Your power-weight ratio is showing
by Janus
DEMURRAGE has a long and respectable history. Dr. Johnson 200 years ago defined it as "an allowance made by merchants to masters of ships, for their stay in a port beyond the time appointed-: and the word was in use at least a century earlier. The railways have borrowed the practice from the shipmasters. and the hauliers from the railways.
The principle is beyond dispute. It costs money to keep standing idle any transport medium from the giant oil tanker to the pallet. The operator must make up the deficiency either in his rate or by a special charge. If the customer is responsible the procedure is straightforward, although whether the customer will always agree to pay demurrage is another matter.
Often the fault does not lie with him. A vehicle belonging to a haulier may be held up at the premises of a firm which is not the original customer. There is little hope of direct compensation in such circumstances and no hope at all when the delay is due to congestion, bad weather, road works, Ministry inspections, vehicle failures and the
many other ills that road transport is heir to.
AGAINST these possibilities the haulier insures in the general level of his rates. With a certain amount of trouble he can work out the cost to his business of some or all of the obstacles he meets. His calculations may help him to rearrange his work so that delays are reduced or to show his customers or the authorities the advantage of taking steps where possible to eliminate the delays.
Much can often be done to help. Loading and unloading facilities can be improved; road works can be carried out at less inconvenient times; alternative routes can be provided; obstructions can be shifted; and so on. Some of the changes thought necessary, such as road widening or the building of a new road, may adversely affect members of the public.
Hence the hostility against road transport. The operator is not insensitive to it. He would prefer a solution to his problems which puts nobody else to inconvenience. Clearly this is not always possible. Indeed the journey of every vehicle, whether the carrier of a giant transformer or a bicycle, sets up a series of side effects on other road users.
The assumption is that these effects are invariably bad. The mere presence of a vehicle makes it the potential cause or victim of an accident. The vehicle may be noisy or in other ways a nuisance to the public. If there is congestion each vehicle adds its quota.
The assumption is not invariably correct. It is not certain that congestion is in itself a hazard or that it always annoys the road users who are held up. A prisoner on the way to jail or two young people in a taxi might even prefer to spin out the journey for as long as possible.
These are extreme cases. But owing to the infinitely possible variations it seems pointless if not absurd to try to estimate in money terms the benefit to the community, for example, of increasing the power-weight ratio of a lorry. There is no doubt that the increase would make it possible for the vehicle to save time on most journeys and to be less frequently the cause of slowing down other vehicles, particularly on gradients where the road layout is not suitable for overtaking. Why not leave it at that?
TO do the Ministry of Transport justice it does not shrink from a task merely because it is absurd. The Road Research Laboratory has actually carried out an experiment with three vehicles of varying power-weight ratios; and in a 30-page report with six tables, three appendices, seven charts and one map, has come to the conclusion that an increase from 5 bhp to 10 bhp per ton for a vehicle travelling 50.000km in 1969 in the day-time would save the community £107 in reduced delay and operating costs for following vehicles.
Apparently the £107 was not distributed among the following drivers who were thus made involuntary guinea-pigs. Their opinions might have been interesting and might well have been made available without payment. The Ministry lorries were carrying cast-iron and concrete blocks, "correctly distributed to give permissible axle loads" as the report rather primly notes. This made it possible for "the observers in the vehicle cabs to see the queue following-. There was no apparatus to hear the comments of the "queue following"; otherwise one may be sure that the report would have mentioned the fact.
With an experiment of this kind it is always difficult to know whether, as the report claims, the vehicles taking part were really following "the normal practice'. The dispatch of three heavy lorries at 5min intervals over each stage of 80km may in itself have made a considerable difference to the usual flow of traffic on the route.
The behaviour of motorists may also have been influenced by the presence on the roadside of an accompanying car with a driver and passenger. Their function, says the report, was to act as "observers", but very likely they were themselves observed by more than one sharp-eyed motorist who regulated his subsequent conduct in accordance with what he considered to be the significance of this wayside scrutiny.
Behind the report lies the intention at least to consider enforcing minimum power-weight ratios. Operators are bound to have divided minds on the subject. Reduced journey times may mean higher productivity. On the other hand the higher power will increase fuel consumption, the vehicles will be more expensive and the heavier engines will reduce the permitted payload.
HOW the community will benefit is relevant and may be the main factor in the ultimate decision. The attempt to convert the benefit into sterling still seems pointless. There are so many other obstacles that lie in the traveller's path. Costed out in the same solemn fashion the total might be astronomical. But there is no way of assessing it accurately, nor of levying it on the supposed culprits, or of passing it on to the supposed victims.
Goods trains have been known to stray on to the main line and hold up a succession of following trains. The passengers will fume at the waste of time rather than the waste of their money. A farm tractor suddenly emerging on a narrow but well-used road will soon build up a much longer following queue than even the low-powered lorry. The itinerant tinker with a horse and cart may be even more of an obstacle.
Nobody suggests that this type of vehicle should be forbidden. Their exclusion from motorways is significant. The report shows that the route chosen for the Ministry experiment left out motorways and long lengths of dual carriageway. The somewhat naive reason given was that "delays to other traffic on these types of road would on average be negligible".
HAD this point been pursued the conclusion might well have been that the community would benefit much more from a better road system than from an increase in power-weight ratio. While not ruling out the increase this would put it in the right perspective. With more motorways and dual carriageways available the lorry operator might find it more and more to his advantage to use the higher-powered vehicles so that in the end compulsion might hardly be necessary.
As it is the Juggernaut-chasers and other enemies of the lorry, while no doubt imperfectly understanding the purpose of the report or its content, have seized on its conclusions as evidence of their argument that the lorry is a menace to the community and ought to be prohibited. Neither the Minister nor the Ministry in any way shares this opinion but recent agitation has made them aware that they must reckon with it. They are not helping themselves by putting out reports which can so easily be construed as a condemnation of a vital element in the national economy.