News of the Week Fairness Demanded for Prospective Buyers of New Vehicles
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SSECRETARY G. W. Irwin, Eastern Associated Road Operators, has been investigating the position with regard to new vehicles. He has come to the following conclusions and makes certain suggestions. When applications are made to purchase new vehicles a considerable delay intervenes' before the applicant knows whether he may or may not make the desired purchase. From information which has been given by the Minister of Transport, it would seem that this delay may well last, in any given case, until the end of the war.
The procedure is that the application is forwarded by the Regional Transport Commissioner, with or without his recommendation (according to the circumstances of the case), to the Minister of Transport. The Minister has, let us say, 200 applications but has only 20 vehicles available during the month. Naturally, he allots the 20 vehicles to the most urgent cases, carrying forward the 180 unlucky applications.
The following month he gets, say, a further 200 applications and still has only, let us suppose, 20 -vehicles to play with. He now sorts through 380 applications and picks out 20 winners —naturally, all based on real urgency in the national interest, and so the matter develops. A.R.O. has been asked if it can suggest any method of accelerating the procedure.
One method would undoubtedly be to use R.T.C.'s as a filter. Not a perfect method maybe, because no R.T.C. can be expected to be aware of the comparative urgency of applications from other areas than his own. However, it is, at least, a practical rough-and-ready method of dividing the sheep from the goats, and thereby leaving the Ministry to deal with only cases of real urgency.
Under this method, when R.T.C.'s are satisfied that the applicant's case is not of such urgency as to warrant the purchase of a new vehicle, he should be told so forthwith. This would allow him to know where he stood and enable him to make such alternative arrangements as might be open to him.
So far as is understood, the present method is to forward all applications, whether urgent or not, to the Ministry, and leave the applicants completely in the dark, not knowing whether their applications have been forwarded with a recommendation or the reverse. It is admitted that even a recommended application is no guarantee that permission will be granted to purchase.
• In this matter it is suggested that any operator who has applied for a licence to purchase a new vehicle, and who has been referred to the secondhand market and finds extortionate prices demanded for such vehicles, should report the circumstances to the Regional Transport Commissioner.