Passing Comments
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"Runners" Can Give UAULAGE contractors in Flexibility to Central"Liverpool have for many i7ed Concern . . • years found it advantageous to employ "runners" to supervise the smooth running of traffic arrangements in the dock area, involving the employment of privately owned goods vehicles. " Runners " are a little-known class of men. A report on transport, issued recently by the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce, states: " The ' runner ' is a highly skilled man of some position, normally travelling by car, and charged with the duty of seeing that road transport is actually available at the time and place required. His work in no way replaces normal bookings, but is designed to keep them in a proper state of flexibility and to prevent waste of time, to master porters and *30 road operators alike. by making whatever minor adjustments are desirable and possible. Not only does this mean the supervision of each job, but the correlation of all jobs in a particular area, by taking vehicles off one job whenever necessary and setting them to anothei in which some element of urgency arises. It goes without saying that his success depends entirely on the skill which he shows, but his employment, at a relatively high salary, was found to be vital by many private road operators, and his maximum employment in nationalized surroundings is very much to be encouraged. He is, in fact, the embodiment of flexibility—the supreme need of road transport—and he seems to indicate a method by which that need can be fulfilled, even in an atmosphere of centralized control."