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Members' view o the South East

John Darker explores the Kent region and talks to some committee hauliers who are based in is diverse area

F YOUR ORIGINS are in the Midlands or North you may be surprised to learn that over a third of the road transport industry's manpower is employed by companies in the South East Region.

That is true of companies in scope to the Road Transport industry Training Board. If the own-account transport firms are included the dominant — and some might say disproportionete — influence of the South East is a fact of life.

As my latest foray proved, here is an astonishing diversity of terrain, as well as road transport attitudes, in the county of Kent, which I chose as representative of the region. Few counties can boast such vivid contrasts of scenery, and diverse industry. The rural parts of Kent need very different kinds of driver from the urbanised industrial sectors.

My first call was to meet Peter Best, managing director of Dartford Wharfage Company, a Londoner by birth but a Kentish man by adoption — he's been at Dartford for 22 years. He runs a largish fleet of vehicles (80) and — an interesting contrast — some 70 barges which carry, amongst other things, two-ton slabs of lead. The lead is discharged over the side at Dagen. ham Docks and thence by barge to the refinery at Northfleet.

Dartford Wharfage Company was set up in 1902 with a sister company, Erith and Dartford Lighterage Company. The two activities mesh together very well but the roles are distinctive. Traditionally, the lighterage trade centres on the City of London, especially premises with wharves.

There is no question but that road haulage is indispensable for inland deliveries. There must be interesting costing comparisons with IVO tonnes of lead pulled by a tug with six dumb barges and the alternative costs by road. It is a "horses for courses" story.

Peter Best wears a variety of hats. He's chairman of Dartford Creek Navigation Commissioners and he was disappointed when the Hull dockers rejected he BACAT (Barges aboard Catamaran) concept, which could have been a shot in the arm to Thames-side lightermen, and road hauliers serving them. Peter is a member of the Dartford and Gravesend sub-area of he RHA and sits on the Area Committee in London. He's also chairman of Kent Transport Federation, with which he has been involved for 21/2 years.

The Kent Transport Federa

tion is the oldest JIC in road haulage. It meets four times a year formally, but much more frequently when pay bargaining is in train. And I was glad to hear that the JIC concerns itself with wider aspects than pay and conditions.

It is involved with legislative requirements such as the Health and Safety Act and it helps the RHA — who are concerned with national road projects — by providing a useful local "voice". Some Kent local authorities are involved in public participation exercises and the KTF can contribute advice and experience.

The Kent Transport Federation is the employers' "side" of the JIC. With 50 or 60 members, all said to be members of the RHA, it represents the major road hauliers in the county. If Peter's firm is typical, local RHA firms have had to accept trade unionism as a powerful force, if only because much work involves docks and the well organised paper industry.

The RHA sub-area meetings at Gravesend are not well supported; only six members may turn up. The reason, says Peter Best, is that the RHA is not the employers' voice on the JIC. "We can't talk about wages at meetings because the Kent Transport Federation is responsible."

You might think that, with KTF member firms in the RHA there would be no problem. Peter Best once suggested that the KTF could be a section of the RHA, formally recognised as such by the Metropolitan and S.E. area.

But that idea did not take hold, for some members of the Federation thought that such an arrangement would prejuc the valued KTF autonomy, its short lines of commun tions. And the RHA, as I un stand it, feared that KTF vv; dangerous "splinter group" This is an issue of more t local significance. If, as P Best suggests, RHA sub-a are dying on the ground, Association "will have to b people together and pro\ assurances of autonomy".

There are indications that

KTF approach does not wh meet the desires of F members in Kent. The East I. sub-area, Peter Best conce, "is not actively associated I KTF but they mostly pay wages (£64, £7.50 sub tence).

There are not too m

examples of honours be awarded for selfless service Trade Association. P, Brazier, OBE, was Hon Se the East Kent sub-area of RHA for 28 years, and the two years he doubled chairman as well. He is stil the committee but is thankf be relieved of the day-to. chores. I agreed with him local secretaries are the RH) practical purposes. With their dedication groups wi not meet, and members w, not be informed.

Peter's firm — he is tr manager — is C. J. Nicholls of Newing Green, near Hy The company got out of ger haulage some years ago ar now purely concerned with ping work, for which rates "quite good."

The M20, quite nee' Newing Green, occupies pa the Nicholls' fleet. Owr quarries, as well as vehicles, firm is well placed to help i road improvements in Kent. spite the cuts in road expe ture, demand for tippers in Kent has exceeded sum* late.

Sub-area meetings in Kent are open to all but I ga the support is less than it shi

ue to the many distractions 3 today.

that of the KTF? I asked "We had nothing to do it down here — we stuck London. Now the concept • changed and several. 'tiers belong to it. We felt :ederation was in too much lurry and it needed to study rnplications more closely. inhkely to join it."

?.ter Brazier, if I interpret

rightly, thinks that loyers can have good ionships with drivers — in union firms — without luch formalised machinery, etc. His own company was involved in the January e, possibly because the ; did not need to draw in hauliers and tipper opera"It was out of control so far e TGWU was concerned," ose involvement with roads s road hauliers like Peter ier strong convictions. He :s it is silly to build sections ad which may not be linked Dr years. "I would do the e thing progressively, like a aing paralysis". He thinks Channel Tunnel was the ast delaying factor in taking notorway to Dover; without Tunnel concept the road Id have,been completed 3 ago.

n the tactics of road hauliers roads project, Peter Brazier he keeps a low profile ss it is vitally necessary to something at meetings. better not to blast off. You better with private ying."

ack Henley, of Henley sport Company Ltd, Goudt, near Pennbury, has been e RHA for 1 5 years and has active for the last five. s. He operates 68 vehicles, ily on agricultural produce fruit. He is a member of the )inal Council of the RHA and is vice-chairman of the Agricultural Haulage group.

Mr Henley says drivers of the right sort are hard to find in his part of Kent, and they don't come cheap. He feels that 100 per cent union membership would be irrelevant in West Kent but for the customers served, such as Sainsburys and Covent Garden market.

He has strong views on clearing houses although he operates one himself at Paddock Wood. "Local owner-drivers who know what the produce traffic demands are given preference over drivers from the North and Midlands seeking return loads".

Some customer firms, he says, are very rigid and overunionised, "When you can't collect produce before 4 or 5 pm with two or three pick-ups, it may be difficult to deliver the other side of London by the deadline of 9 pm, or earlier. He is irked by the need to bring back returnable trays which are seldom ready for collection at a time convenient to the haulier.

It was very evident that Henley Transport need a dedicated type of driver prepared to accept the varying starting times to fit in with business demands.

, Jack Henley is one of the most forthright men in road haulage and not afraid to criticise road hauliers. "The average haulier is a poor businessman. Many are reluctant to join a trade association. They can't see that you must contribute to an organisation to get anything useful from it. It is not enough to rally round when things go wrong. So many hauliers do all the wrong things, without taking advice."

A road haul* character in Kent is E. H. (Ernie) Nicholls Junior whose Sittingbourne depot is located, surprisingly, at the end of a suburban road. Not an ideal position, but the large site, now under development, provides exciting prospects for Ernie's family firm to develop.

When we met, Ernie said: "I'm one of the silly six who started the Kent Transport Federation." Perhaps it was a little premature, he coricedes, but he feels the road haulage industry is old-fashioned:, "We must grow up and not be afraid of trade unions. We must extend co-operation, not only with trade unions but also within the ranks of hauliers.'" Ernie Nicholls thinks drivers' pay gets too much consideration, His line is that whereas inflationary costs in manufacturing are important three months before they take full effect, in road haulage the effect is felt six months after they take effect.

Not all members of the KTF stopped work in the January strike, I learned. The lucky firms were "over the hills, Maidstone way . . . " How typical of road haulage labour relations, even in a county with a powerful transport federation!

Ernie Nichols deliberately inserted the "Junior" in his firm's title to provide a bit of novelty. His Dad was also E. H. Nicholls. The device of Junior stems from an early appreciation of Sammy Davis (Jnr). The haulage business began When Ernie was 20 and purchased a Special A vehicle, to orierate in the produce sector. The business expanded, and now there are 24 vehicles and 30 trailers. Since 1970, when competition caused the change in policy, the firm has been heavily involved in hauling for paper-makers in Kent.

Ernie Nicholls was sub-area chairman until six years ago and reckons now to be acting chairman, hoping for enough • membership support to get meetings going again. He accepts that the area has stagnated since the KTF was set up. Members will attend meetings on wages but little else appears to interest them.

The "silly six", including Ernie, set up the Federation because they resented being tied to Metropolitan pay rates. (The Kentish men, numbering some 300, felt overwhelmed by some 2000 RHA members in Greater London).

RHA politics need a deal of researching to come up with any clear-cut answers. I found disillusionment in Kent over the settlement of the January strike, combined with a recognition that KTF or no KTF the national bargaining decisions next time would be pretty conclusive, since no regional union leader would dare to accept a deal locally which sold his members much short of the going rate.

The public participation exercises by local government foreshadowed by the Skeffington Report are now catching on with other organisations. In a Tonbridge shop window I noticed a welcome innovation by Tonbridge Civic Society advertising a public meeting to examine the contribution made by five local firms of manufacturers. Said the posters: What do they do? What skills are needed? Why are they in Tonbridge? Where do they sell their products?

The discussion on the last question would have brought in how the goods are conveyed to the marketplace of the world — for some of the firms were exporters. The lac% are slowly slinking in in Britain that unless everyone takes a lot more notice of what our factories make and market successfully, we are sunk as an industrialised country. The Civic Society innovation deserves to be copied widely and I would hope that ETA and RHA companies support this type of initiative.

I was interested to meet Fred Page, the Group Transport arid Plant Manager of A. E. Bartholomew and Company, who sits on the South Eastern Division committee of the FTA. Fred said membership of the ETA was valuable in that it showed members they were not alone; all faced similar problems and all needed reliable advice.

Bartholomews, it was stressed, do not make a living out of transport, though it plays a significant part in their operations as contractors to the gas industry laying gas pipes. The bulk of the stores — gas mains land couplings etc — are held at Gas Board premises and the movements are mostly exStores.

Fred Page supplies transport to the contracting side of the firm. The fleet is mixed, mostly Under 31/2 tons gross, and includes box vans and Hiabequipped flat vehicles. Fred Page says the only way an own-account transport manager can submit a grouse to the Department of Transport is through a trade association and one benefit he values is that the FTA will say candidly whether an individual company problem is a valid one worthy of action over a wider field.

So often transport managers complain about the difficulty of getting and holding good drivers. Talking to Fred Page, whose job involves servicing 11 sites in the South East and South West of the country, it was clear that contracting requires drivers with willing muscles who are not afraid to load and unload, and use a shovel to clean up sites and remove spoil.

The company hires vehicles and plant for various sites. The Bartholomew drivers, with vans, service gangs of two or three men. Sometimes JCBs provide mechanically aided loading, but on a small job the driver needs his own shovel.

With hired vehicles (with drivers) the normal thing now is that the hired driver will merely drive, not load. It is a fact of life; frequently the Bartholomew driver has to take his own vehicle and load the hired vehicle!

Fred Page agreed with me that in theory a good fitter should be interchangeable between plant and vehicle maintenance jobs but in practice fitters "always lean one way or the other". So in allocating fitters to particular sites the likely bias in the workload determines which fitter is sent. It seeems it is easier to hire plant than lorries today.

Fred Page learned some of his engineering as a fitter in the RNAS and he told me some wonderful yarns about Bubbly Bosuns and Rum Rations and of his hobby, caravanning.

On a recent holiday in Cornwall it was necessary for Fred — or a local bus driver — to reverse down a very narrow lane. The bus driver made no move to reverse so Fred performed his party piece and reversed expertly.

Mrs Page was beckoned to and she walked to the bus expecting a ticking-off. The Cornish bus driver was not cross at all. "Tell your husband that in all the years I've driven buses in Cornwall I've never before seen anything to touch that display. of reversing.' Clearly, Fred Page should open a school for caravanners!

Another large company in Tonbridge is Wallace and Tiernan Ltd, who make measurement and control equipment. The company, employing some 600 people, is part of a multinational employing 14,000. K. W. J. (Kip) Fisher, the transport and dispatch manager, is on the South East divisional committee and he makes much use of FTA facilities such as the vehicle inspection scheme and the wages digest which enables him to know the going rate for drivers. Committee meetings, said Kip, are well supported. with a turn-out of around 40 from Kent, Surrey and -Su.ss. ex membership. Kent, as I suspected, is the "heaviest" end of the area, industry-wise.

Kip Fisher was a founder member of the Institute of Supervisory Management following courses related to NEBBS and he has found this Institute work a useful element in Tonbridge life.

Wallace and Kiernan drivers deliver to all parts of the UK weekly with runs taking as much as five days. The men are members of the engineers' union. Mostly between 40 and 50, they like long-distance work and there is a waiting list of drivers. The drivers are regarded as specialists, ambassadors helping customer relations.

Russell Gray, group transport adviser, Wiggins Teape Ltd, is

on the South Eastern Cour committee of FTA, chairma the FTA users committee ar past chairman of the comr cial committee. He is concer with all types of transport vices and negotiates trans rates for his company. His involves contact with all leve employees, in effect, he it internal consultant.

Russell must inform hirr of the detail of road trans legislative and opera' requirements and he values technical advice he gets thro FTA membership. All I( transport executives in Wig Teape depots throughout country attend local meetings.

As an economist, Rus Gray would be better qual than most of the delegate this year's FTA conferenc appreciate the significanc some of the wide-ranging w surveys of energy, social Ire etc presented. Reducing 5. speculative forecasts to medium-term planning neer Wiggins Teape is just par Russell's interesting job.

En route to the Eastboi conference of the FTA I vi: the Association's new man ment centre at Wadhurst w courses — some for the CP have already been held. centre is admirably functi and I've no doubt it will pl major part in training the n young distribution execut Training officer Major J Owen is indeed fortunat work in such a splendid set The FTA members who go t — and other firms which hire the centre — will find rewarding experience.