Janus comments

20th September 1968, Page 254

20th September 1968

Page 254

Page 254, 20th September 1968 — Janus comments

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Strange interlude

INVARIABLY hauliers come high on the annual list of bankruptcies. In some years this dubious numerical record need not be taken too seriously. There are many birds of passage who aspire to become hauliers and take with them nothing but their disillusion at the end of a few months. Certain small one-man businesses seem permanently perched on the edge of disaster. To complete the picture there are many people running rather obscure businesses who fancy that merely to describe themselves as hauliers gives them an air of solid respectability.

Analysis of recent bankruptcies might show a disturbing increase in what has previously been a small element. There are more frequent reports of long-established companies headed by well-known names in road transport who have decided to give up the struggle. Usually their case is not desperate. They have other business interests into which they can divert their activities. In most cases, however, road haulage is the poorer for their loss.

Several feasons or combinations of reasons are given for their decision. They complain of rising costs without corresponding opportunities to put up their rates, and of the increasing obligations placed on them by a spate of new legislation. In particular they express apprehension of the effects of the Transport Bill.

Drop-out rate

It is more than likely that the drop-out rate will accelerate as more information becomes available of the interim plans which the Government have for the period between the passing of the Bill and the creation of the new licensing system in full working order. Provided there is no Parliamentary hitch the process can begin within the next three months or so.

In the early stages of the Bill the impression was that there would be plenty of time for operators to condition themselves to the new environment. Mrs. Barbara Castle's White Paper on freight transport gave this reassurance: "The present system of A-, Band C-licensing will remain in force until quantity licensing is introduced. It will run in parallel for some time with the proposed system of quality licences which will be introduced as soon as possible." It was also emphasized that the Minister of Transport would only bring in quantity licensing "when she is satisfied that the Freightliner services have developed sufficiently to justify its introduction".

As the various appointed days draw near the prospect looks less appetising. The official attitude now is that important changes will be put into effect virtually on the day that the Bill receives the Royal Assent. Vehicles weighing 30cwt or less will be excluded entirely from licensing. Other operators, whatever type of licence they hold, will be allowed within a year to carry whatever goods they please. The one exception will be for vehicles with a gross weight in excess of 16 tons.They will be kept strictly to the terms of the operator's existing licence until quantity licensing is brought in.

To learn of this just a few days before their biennial efflorescence at Earls Court is not the most heartening news to the manufacturers of the heavier vehicles. A flourishing and expanding home market is the essential foundation for their export programme. They have already made known their fears of the damage they will sustain as a result of quantity licensing. The danger now seems to be a good deal closer.

They will not be so concerned where their customer holds a C-licence. The trader will be only too happy to continue running his own vehicles for as long as possible. His one disappointment lies in the confirmation that the never entirely credible Lords amend ment postponing the introduction of quantity licensing until some time after 1971 will not be accepted by the Government. In default of this the estimated date towards the end of 1970 is as good as most people expected.

Hauliers will feel they are worse hit by the Government's plan for the period up to that time. A negligible proportion, perhaps 5 per cent, of their vehicles weigh no more than 30cwt. Nearly all small vans run under C-licence. As the vehicle weight increases the proportion operated by hauliers and on own-account evens out until what is usually regarded as a satisfactory rough balance has been struck.

Main trend

It is bound to be disturbed in the first heady rush of freedom. Hauliers may be able to attract some traffic from the kind of trader who has not bothered to support their licence applications in the past but would be content to use them. The main trend will be in the opposite direction. Many traders with vehicles weighing no more than 16 tons gross will not resist the temptation to earn an extra income from them.

This has been the well-camouflaged fear of hauliers all along and it must be brought into the open by the plan for instant freedom. They have accepted the abolition of old-style licensing with a good grace. Opposition would have been hopeless in any event against the virtual unanimity of all the political parties. At least there was the expectation that the Minister would temper the wind to the shorn haulier and introduce the new freedom by easy stages.

Intelligent anticipation may have prompted recent successful applications by hauliers to exchange heavier for smaller vehicles. These will be able to continue not only with the long-distance traffic at present carried within the operator's declaration of normal user but with any other work that he is able to find for them. A slightly more remote benefit is that the vehicles will not be subject to quantity licensing.

Worst situation

During the interim period hauliers with vehicles over 16 tons will be in the worst situation of all. They will not have to face any greater competition than hitherto from other hauliers and from traders on ownaccount who are also handicapped by running larger vehicles. But they will be exposed to competition—and without power to retaliate—from vehicles of 16 tons or less owned by every type of operator.

Their situation seems much more serious still when they look ahead for a couple of years. Sooner or later, because their vehicles are above the exempt limit, they will have to apply for special authorizations if they wish to continue in the long-distance field or to carry prescribed traffic. They may well be unsuccessful and prudence suggests that they should make their contingency plans without waiting for the refusal.

Many of them, particularly those in direct competition with a freightliner route, would like to build up their short-distance practice as an insurance against the loss of their long-distance work. They would find this difficult at any time. Their vehicles are not ideal for the purpose and there are plenty of established operators in the shortand medium-distance field.

Under the conditions now to be imposed the task will be virtually impossible. Even the established hauliers will be found desperately striving to hold off a host of rivals revelling in their newly conferred freedom and the operator with the larger vehicles will be still further hampered because he alone will be restricted to the terms of his own still guttering licence.

Even the strange interlude before the Bill takes full effect will show up one of its basic flaws. If the Goverment's plans for the road transport industry had stopped short at replacing the old system by quality licensing and a single operator's licence for everybody there would have been no difficulty in arranging a smooth transition perhaps in stages. If in the end the cold blast of freedom proved too much for certain operators at least the result could have been justified as the survival of the fittest.

These hauliers whom the coming changes will put out of business will often be among the most efficient. It will be by accident of circumstances rather than by good judgment that many others will be able to remain in business. The road transport industry will be impoverished for the sake of a few tons of traffic which after all may have a negligible effect on the fortunes of the railways.