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Less onerous probing in operators' licensing
Page 189
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• Applicants for operators' licences may not have to supply details of their past record of convictions and GV9s extending over the previous five years, transport and distribution executives in London and Manchester were told this week. Speaking at seminars organized by Business and Industrial Training Ltd., and sponsored by Commercial Motor, Mr. Peter Reed, lecturer in economics at Reading University, said that following representations made by the operator associations the Ministry was likely to reduce the period of investigation to perhaps two years.
This, he said, was one of the results of the pilot application scheme in which operators in a few traffic areas had taken part. He also thought it unlikely that any hard and fast rule would be applied in assessing whether a certain number and type of past convictions should rule out the grant of an operators' licence. But he stated his belief that some LAs were only waiting for the introduction of operators' licensing to "get their hands on" operators who had persistently bad records.
Although existing operators would in most cases get an automatic transfer to an operators' licence, said Mr. Reed, it had to be clearly understood that at first renewal, or on the first major variation application, even established operators would face the full vigour of inquiry to be faced by new applicants.
Mr. Reed presented a paper "Company involvement in operators' licensing" at both seminars which were entitled "The Transport Act in action." The seminar will be repeated next week in London. The business and operational effects of the Act were dealt with in a paper by Mr. F. Woodward, manager, transport services, the Plessey Co. Ltd., while the practical details of the Act itself were explained by Mr. J. P. B. Sherriff, deputy editor of CM. Transport policy leading up to the Act was examined by CM's editor, who took the chair at both seminars.
In an open forum, seminar members sought guidance on many aspects of current and new legislation. Particular concern was expressed by several operators at the ruling that export traffic off-loaded at the port would be subject to special authorizations procedure for loads on large goods vehicles travelling over 100 miles, while through-traffic on trailers or veh icles would almost certainty be exempt. One operator explained that he transhipped at Dover from his own trailers to those of his French associate, and the complication of special authorizations might mean that all his trailers would have to have TIR carnets just in case they had to make the crossing.
Transport managers' licensing prompted many questions. One operator with a home based fleet asked who would be the nominat ed manager for his single outlying vehicles based, with one driver each, at Edinburgh and
Glasgow. Mr. Reed suggested that each driver would have to hold a -MIL, but Mr. Sherriff thought there was scope for a con
sultant to act as transport manager for a number of small bases belonging to different companies in one area.
Another questioner was concerned to know how deeply Licensing Authorites might probe the financial fitness of applicants for operators' licences, and to what extent the assessors, provided for in the Act, would influence the decision. Mr. Reed said he thought there would be no hard and fast rules and he hoped that bare financial questions would not dominate the decision; it was important that only current economic considerations should apply, but that the applicant's personal prospects should be given at least as much weight as his actual money backing.
Mr. Cottee feared that, while the LAs would try to judge each case on its individual merits, once a few cases had been taken to the Transport Tribunal one might see the beginnings of the sort of case law which had grown up under carriers' licensing.
Several questions illustrated concern at the proposed cuts in drivers' hours in view of the difficulty of making deliveries, particularly to retail premises, during the very limited periods which were now general. Mr. Woodward hoped that night deliveries might yet be more widely accepted, though residents' complaints about noise had caused several schemes to founder. A seminar member thought that a new, determined attempt to get night deliveries going might now have better chance of success.
Mr. Woodward recommended that outward journeys should start outside shop hours, with the vehicle running first to its farthest point and then delivering on the homeward journey. By a form of split shifts, which the eventual reduction in hours might make necessary, a second load would leave base at midday to be delivered on the outward journey, with the vehicle running back empty to base outside shop delivery hours. A course member point
ed out that running loaded to the farthest point before delivering was no solution for most hauliers, who required the facility to pick up a return load on an-empty vehicle.
In his paper, Mr. Woodward made a plea for greater integration of the work of the haulier, the C-licensee and the Freightliner services and during question time he repeated his belief that great economies were possible in this way. Detail planning of operations could save much empty running, especially if this planning were done by the three parties rather than regarding them as quite separate transport operations.
He gave examples of the considerable financial savings which his own company had achieved by arranging its own collection and delivery of Freightliner containers and he produced costings which suggested that the railways put a very high proportion of their rate on the road c. and d. He believed they were deliberately "costing themselves out" of the road carriage. He explained that, at one point, he was able to use old but roadworthy vehicles to collect and deliver railborne containers and thus show a considerable saving, since the vehicles had reached the end of their depreciation life.
At both seminars, speakers stressed that the special authorizations procedure was still in the balance, but recommended that operators take some account of its possible introduction in their forward planning. Mr. Reed said "quantity" licensing remained Government policy, and Mr. Cottee thought that, !despite much wishful thinking in the industry, special authorizations might well be introduced, especially if British Railways' financial results for their first year under the new system of accounting proved disappointing.