Fixed Rates?
Page 23
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
THERE is absolutely no doubt at all that the current recommendations for increases in haulage rates are thoroughly justified. What is, however, much open to doubt is whether the majority of the haulage industry will benefit from them. These are, after all, no more than recommendations to Members of the associations concerned. There will now presumably follow the usual Period of uncertainty amongst operators. Some (a few) will seek, and get, the full increase. Others will seek a smaller increase, the size depending largely upon the strength of their hands with their customers. Many more will seek no extra income at all; not because they do mit want it but because they know without,asking that they will only send the customer off to a cut-price competitor.
The cut-price merchant-there's the rub! He is always around, doing his disreputable damndest to depress rates. Whenever operators • try for a rates increase there follows a spate of instances where one haulier deliberately holds back because he knows that by doing so he can cream off sonic business from his more ethical rivals in the • district.
Why is the question of fixed rates (or. at least fixed minimum charges) such anathema to the industry? Is it so terrible to face customers saying: "1 give a good service, I insist on a reasonable return "? The 1920-type days of cut-throat competition must sooner or later be eliminated; but they will never disappear if a subject as vital as rates levels cannot be enforced by the bodies recommendim,, those levels. Fair rates for the job can only be achieved universally if a statutory body sets them. having first taken into account the case both for hauliers and their customers.