Integration crucified
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INTEGRATED freight transport is a mirage which can never be translated into economic reality, Road Haulage Association national chairman Ken Rogers said last weekend.
He told Chartered Institute of Transport members in Ripon, North Yorkshire, that integration is a high-sounding ideal which recedes faster the closer it is looked at. "The mirage-like effect has defeated every attempt at integration for good economic reasons," he added.
He said that the straitjackets necessary for co-ordination to work would add such heavy costs to the haulage industry that there would be few resulting benefits.
And, dismissing the idea of a return to an organisation on the lines of the post-war British Transport Commission, Mr Rogers asserted: "I can think of no industry less suitable for forcing into a bureaucratic nationalised straitjacket than the entrepreneurial world of road haulage.
"It is not therefore surprising that efforts to create a monolithic industry have failed."
Pointing out that there are far greater diseconomies of scale in haulage than economies, Mr Rogers said: "The most efficient size of haulage company is small."