United they stand and deliver
Page 23
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One of the surprises at the excellent BRSL seminar last week was the ready acceptance by distribution executives of the idea that entirely new ways of tackling retail delivery might soon have to be adopted.
Several speakers, all of them senior and experienced transport men, foresaw that daytime retail deliveries would soon be banned in some city centres. Whatever the disadvantages, night delivery may eventually be forced upon the most unwilling participants. But there is an alternative —the delivery of goods to designated urban bulk stores, for consolidation into more economic van-loads for individual shops. This could mean a single vehicle, instead of perhaps a dozen, delivering to any given shop on a particular day. In fact the scheme would not be as simple as this, because some loads would not be compatible, and much perishable traffic would be excluded. There is also the inescapable fact that, however organized, the total tonnage to be moved would not diminish.
However, one speaker who has great experience in the field felt that this system, and even more advantageously a combination of consolidation and night deliveries, could produce lower freight costs through higher utilization of vehicles, plus deliveries guaranteed as to day and time.
If economies can indeed be achieved in this way, then should the industry wait for compulsion in order to take advantage of them?' This point was raised at the seminar, and the familiar answer boiled down to the reluctance of rival firms to come together, or to initiate such togetherness. The necessary catalysts are surely the associations. The Freight Transport Association, for instance, has already set up a working party to look at urban transport and traffic problems. What a feather in the cap of the industry if it could forestall local delivery bans by going forward with a voluntary scheme to meet the case.