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"The most comprehensive picture yet available"
Page 183
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0 F what use is it to know that there are 11,700 C-licensed vehicles used to carry textiles, that 2,000 of those vehicles have an unladen weight in excess of 3 tons and that of that number 8 per cent are articulated? By itself the information may seem useless. It is taken from the latest survey of road goods transport by the Ministry of Transport and is merely a sample of many thousands of facts and figures which go to build up the most comprehensive picture yet available of the work done by nearly 11 m. commercial goods vehicles.
The cynic may still be unconvinced. He may point out that merely to pile statistics on top of each other gives no guarantee of the value of the results. The railways have never lacked this kind of data, he may add, and look where it has got them. Road transport operators have managed their affairs admirably so far and there is no reason to suppose they will be any better off now that they know the best or the worst and have figures to prove it. The individual operator knows his own business down to the last hundredweight or the last penny and finds no profit in looking beyond those limits.
The full benefits of the new publication may not be realized for some little time, but already the interests concerned are making their preliminary investigations. Hauliers have found close to the surface the estimate that between 1958 and 1962 the ton mileage covered by vehicles on A, Contract A and B licences increased by onethird from 13,100 m. to 17,300m. ton miles per annum. During the same period the number of vehicles concerned went up by 9 per cent from 173,600 to 192,200. The average carrying capacity of the vehicles also increased sufficiently to account for much of the extra traffic carried.
Greater Productivity
Increased productivity is being achieved by hauliers largely as a result of increasing the size of their vehicles or of turning to articulation. To most operators this may be self-evident. They now have the information needed to compare their individual progress with that of the road haulage industry as a whole. They can also make comparisons with such things as the general growth in the number of vehicles and the average age of vehicles.
The conclusion that more than half of the heavy vehicles of over 3 tons unladen weight were first registered on or after January 1, 1959, and were therefore less than three years old in 1962 provides a satisfactory answer to the allegations sometimes made that the majority of heavy goods vehicle operators have decrepit fleets and are for this reason both a menace on the road and over-ripe for nationalization. Another verdict with political overtones is that the rapid growth of road transport in recent years appears to arise more from growth in activities which depend on the services of road transport than from actual switches of traffic from rail to road ".
The C-licence holder has been working over a different part of the field and has also achieved useful results from the outset Long-distance transport, the survey points out, is a relatively unimportant part of C-licence .work. Only about 26 m tons or 4 per cent of the total tonnage carried by traders in their own vehicles travelled for distances of 100 miles or more. Much C-licence work also involves picking up or setting down several times in one journey.
For such reasons as this, very little of the work at present done under C licence and possibly not a great deal of that done by hauliers could easily and conveniently be transferred to rail. Closer study of the figures may modify this conclusion. In the meantime the railway experts will be making comparisons with the results of their own survey of traffic carried by rail. The summary published in the Beeching report suggested that there might be a considerable volume of traffic "potentially favourable to rail ", and some 16 m. tons was judged eminently suitable for liner trains.
Little Wrong
Convinced that the latest statistics help the cause of free enterprise, the chairman of the Road Haulage Association has already drawn them to the attention of the politicians. The Conservative Party should not find much difficulty in agreeing with him. There seems little wrong ..with a road transport industry which has increased its turnover of traffic by one third in four years. The Labour Party is faced with an additional argument in favour of leaving well alone and its rumoured assault on the C-licence holders seems to have less point than ever.
Three more booklets are promised before the recent survey may be said to have yielded all the secrets it is prepared to give the world. Details of the commodities carried by road transport will be found in Part II, there will be an account of the organization of the survey in Part III, and Part IV will show the flow of goods by road between the main centres of population and industry and other geographic regions. Other interests as well as transport operators and politicians are likely to show increasing awareness as the pattern becomes clearer.
The Licensing Authorities, whose contact with each other has sometimes seemed no more than occasional, will ultimately find laid out for them the complete picture. By that time the information will be two or three years old.
It will still be useful to confirm trends of which the Licensing Authorities may already have been well aware. to indicate other trends which may have escaped them and to show the general direction in which the transport industry is moving.
Individual trades and industries, most of them for the first time, will have details of the vehicles which serve them. Other bodies will absorb the new-found information and convert it to their own purposes. The Export Council for Europe, for example, is sponsoring a transport research organization. The purpose is said to be to conduct market research on the movement of goods within Britain and to export markets and to carry out through-transport cost studies. It is only possible to guess what effect this research will have in con,iunction with the Ministry of Transport statistics.