• HFC chief scorns 'cheap rates' era
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3UTSIDE influences are hayng an increasing effect on now hauliers run their business according to National Freight Corporation chairman Sir Daniel Pettit.
Sir Dan told members of the RHA Western Area in Bristol last Friday, that because of these outside influences greatness was being thrust upon transport. men.
"If we fail as an association to develop a well-formulated approach to the issues at stake, we will be picked off by a host of adversaries and by people who do not wish us well," he warned.
Sir Dan said he could not recall any comparable time when so much interest had been shown in transport or when there had been such an appreciation of the significant note it played in the life of the nation.
Just as industry and commerce were recognising transport as a profession, so must transport people ensure they lived up to the developing significance of the responsibilities they bore in an industrial society.
Of those who attacked the profession, he said that operators should not react negatively and "man the defences." "We've got to carry the fight to the enemy, make our voices heard and show our muscle," he said. According to Sir Dan there are many things in favour of the positive approach. The economy he said was indicating a swing which would lead to a demand for more transport services.
Industry had been enjoying cheap transport for too long, he said, but the time was now right to "straighten things out."
Of the environmental issues which confront road transport Sir Dan said: "Although transport has become the key to the good life it is seen by some as the harbinger of death and destruction in the matters of noise, fumes intrusion, congestion, damage and accidents, all of which lead to pressures aimed-at restricting its use."
Sir Dan warned that it was unrealistic to brush these criticisms aside as emotional irrelevencies.
"Neither must we simply lie down and accept restriction as inevitable," he said. "I regard the cavalier way in which the Severn Bridge diversions have been affected as monstrous."