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Geddes export by Janus
ALTHOUGH there is an obstinate belief that the US leads while other countries follow in the wake, there are occasions when the situation is clearly the reverse. British hauliers were the first to adopt security measures which have subsequently been admired and sometimes copied by the Americans. More recently the US has introduced the TIR system which has long been familiar throughout Europe.
Indications are that the American road transport scene has just about reached the point marked in the UK by the publication in 1965 of the Geddes Report on Carriers' Licensing. That document took most operators by surprise. They were prepared for proposals of even drastic changes in the rules for the licensing game. They did not expect to be told—more or less—that the game was a silly one in any case and that it was about time they grew up.
There is no specific bogyman such as Geddes with which the wives of American truckers can threaten their children; but proposals for changes or reform are in the air and are apparently being received with intereSt by the President and his advisers. One proposal is that the licensing system, which has exercised very strict control over long-distance carriers between states, should be abolished.
ANOTHER proposal which must seem relevant to British operators at the present time is that the Government should no longer fix rates for road and rail. Statutory interference with charges is unknown in the UK, at least..among road operators, although it was suggested to the Geddes Committee from one or two quarters. Rate-fixing is, however, one of the pillars of the transport policy of the Common Market. The fact that little progress has been made with it does not mean that it will be abandoned.
American operators like being licensed and they also apparently enjoy having their rates fixed for them. Strong rumours that both these restrictions might be lifted have prompted the president of American Trucking Associations, Mr William A. Bresnahan, to send a long letter of protest to Mr Richard Nixon.
TOO often in the past, says Mr Bresnahan, taking a line not unfamiliar to British operators, proposed transport legislation has been unrelated to the real transport problem, "frequently based upon speculative and half-baked academic theory or a bald attempt to help one form of transportation at the expense of another". The result in the last two decades has been almost invariably "senseless, bloody and unproductive battles". within the transport community.
Statutory charges are described by Mr Bresnahan as "the historic and essential collective or tariff bureau method of rate making". It has survived even longer than the carriers' licensing system in the UK and was last seriously challenged about 25 years ago on the grounds that it was in violation of the American anti-trust laws. At that time, the transport community, including the shippers, 'successfully urged that the practice should be allowed to continue.
According to Mr Bresnahan, its abolition would do nothing to improve the financial situation of operators. Instead, it would create "a nightmare of chaos and instability". Trade and industry apparently feel much the same. They enjoy the right to have a rate specified for them. In the picturesque language of a spokesman for the National Industrial Traffic League: "We fought and bled for it."
QUANTITY licensing is valued at an equal price. It has many points of resemblance with the now abolished British system of carriers' licensing. An established operator or a newcomer wishing to start a new service must, in the US version of the legislation, meet the test of "public convenience and necessity". "What's wrong with that?" asks Mr Bresnahan, no doubt without knowing or caring that the Geddes Report has already given some kind of answer.
The Interstate Commerce Commission controls about 15,000 hauliers. Mr Bresnahan describes most of them as small, although by British standards they might be regarded as substantial operators. The newcomer does not find it easy to get a licence, "in view of the plethora of service which already is available," as Mr Bresnahan puts it. But there are always established haulage businesses in the market for anyone who has the resources to start a new company.
Sustaining this note a little longer, Mr Bresnahan points out that, if licensing is abolished, many more businesses would be for sale "by owners who know ,they could not survive the ensuing flood of new and sadly misguided competition".
Some British operators may have been thinking along these lines two or three years ago. If so, they did not choose to put their opinion into words, or at any rate into the form of words used by Mr Bresnahan. It is perhaps Strange that they should come from the land proverbially dedicated to free enterprise; or it may be that the Americans are more ready than the British to say what is really in their minds.
MR BRESNAHAN does not hesitate to attack the doctrine of the survival of the fittest, which he equates with "dog-eat-dog". The very large carriers and shippers and communities, he says, might be able to look after themselves. This would not be the case where the carriers, shippers and communities were small. They would be starved of traffic and of services.
The devastation would affect, not only the hauliers, but other forms of transport which are competitive with them, including the railways. They are already faced with troubles of their own. One of the basic problems of the railways, says Mr Bresnahan, is the excess of plant, facilities and services. "That is why they are pleading to be allowed to cut back." An excess of competition, authorized by the Civil Aeronautics Board, has caused substantial losses to the air lines.
DISTINCTION between the American system and carriers' licensing is that the American carriers of goods, as well as of passengers, have an obligation to provide some possibly unprofitable services in return for a degree of protection against competition. These services, Mr Bresnahan warned, would disappear at the same time as the protection. They could not still be provided by existing carriers who had spent "lifetimes and fortunes to build their franchises—franchises which suddenly would be rendered worthless by an arbitrary and drastic change in the rules of the game".
SIMILAR criticism is levelled against a further proposal which would allow road and rail within cer6in limits to change their own rates without ICC supervision. The idea is commendable, says Mr Bresnahan, if it is designed to allow the increase of sub-standard rates to a reasonable level, but not if it led to cut-throat competition without regard to standards or to "the inherent advantages of the different modes of transport".
The background to this spirited defence against a possible attack is the situation two generations ago which persuaded the US Government at the time to give the ICC its licensing and rate-fixing powers. Operators arid users generally approved the legislation—or so it is now maintained with hindsight—and they are equally determined to oppose its repeal. The different political system in the US gives them a better chance than British operators would have had to frustrate the would-be legislators.