:TILL PLEfIN or :nno Ifl THE common MANZ cum
Page 38
Page 39
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
by Francois Pasqualini
FRENCH operators were already burdened with a lot of paperwork before the Common Market came into being, but a new maze of administrative complications has developed since the birth of that organization.
And of course the situation is not likely to improve with the extension of the Euromart to three further countries.
An indication of the headaches which French fleet owners and owner-drivers face lies in the absurd wording of some of the official regulations with which they have to comply. A typical illustration of this Gallic gobbledygook lies in this excerpt from one of the international transport regulations involved:—
"Les autorisations au voyage et les autorisations b ternps delivrees aux transporteurs resident en France sant accompagnees d'un compte-rendu de transport qui dolt etre rempli par le titulaire de lautorisation avant cheque transport."
I shall not bother you with a literal translation of this jargon sample, which boils down to stating that the French trucker who is granted an international trip authorization has to fill in a trip report before making that trip!
The senseless nature of that requirement may just be the result of a translator's error, i.e., the possible use of the word "compte-rendu" (French for "report") instead of the right equivalent when rendering into the Gallic vernacular a regulation originally drafted in one of the other EEC languages. Boners of this kind are not infrequent, although they seldom have as far-reaching consequences as the delivery, shortly after World War II and under the provisions of the Marshall Plan, of gigantic shipments of American corn to France — instead of the wheat she actually needed — because an anonymous French translator did not know that the meaning of the word "corn" in the States differs from that of the same English term.
Rust in the dust
Pei ilaps a couple more samples of industry-connected translation dangers will give you a better idea of the linguistic hurdles that lurk in, for instance, the background of European community membership.
A French import-export firm purchased a lot of US-made automotive and industrial equipment and a clerk in that company once ordered dust from an American manufacturer! He had shortened in the French way the description of a truck part listed in the maker's catalogue as "dust cover". Another employee in the same department would deal the toughest possible blow to a certain type of Stateside industrial equipment every time he had to mention it in his letters: under his blithe pen, roustabout cranes would invariably turn into ''rustabout cranes"!
Staple diet
Returning to the European trucking regulation which prompted the above comments, it is also interesting to note that the paragraph dealing with the "report" to be filled in before the international trip is made was followed by a clause stipulating that the report blanks involved must be printed, not duplicated, and that they must be stapled to the trip authorization.
This is just one example of the countless irritating details with which French road transporters operating across the national borders must cope — but it takes on special significance in the light of the fact that the regulation embodying it is only a general one, applying to haulage operations with any one of the other Euromart countries. Additional hurdles crop up with the individual nation-to-nation regulations which rule transport operations between France and the other EEC countries, whose own road transport policies differ more or less widely from each other.
Moreover, these regulations also vary according to the distance between the borders and the destination points and, on top of this, they are continually being modified by the respective governments of the various member states.
The transport authorizations granted within the framework of these intertwining regulations are subject to bilateral quota agreements between the two contracting countries, which — as UK operators know — slap quantitative limits on the total amounts of goods that may be mutually exchanged.
Zoned!
Distance variations are classified into three general categories: (1) border zone; (2) short-distance zone; (3) long-distance zone.
When a French operator gets an authorization for a trip into West Germany, for instance, it is valid under the border zone classification only if the distance travelled beyond the Franco-German border does not exceed 25 km as the crow flies.
Beyond that mileage, the "penetration zone" falls into the short-distance classification within a geographical area limited on the Western side by a line extending from the Dutch-German border to the Austrian-German border. This line starts from the Rhine and travels from the Dutch-German border to Wesel, then along the Superhighway to Gelsenkirchen, on to Hagen through Bochum and Witten, and further on to Cologne and Siegburg through Federal Road No. 17, Superhighway E-73 and the Cologne-Frankfurt Superhighway, plus a number of other highways leading down to Fussen, on the Austrian border.
Trips beyond the limits of that zone are, of course, included in the long-distance category and subject to special regulations, as are trips involving French trucks that merely travel through West Germany on their way to other countries.
In this connection, it is interesting to note that a fiscal agreement between France and West Germany exempts French trucks temporarily imported into West Germany from payment of the Kraftfahrzeugsteuer (vehicle tax), Reciprocally, West German trucks temporarily imported into France are free from the so-called taxe a l'essieu (axle tax).
The axle tax, incidentally, is an extremely controversial one in France, where truckers have been protesting against it for a long time. Calculated to compensate for the wear-and-tear inflicted by heavy commercial vehicles on national highways, it was instituted to replace two former taxes whose purpose was to protect the railroads against truck traffic competition — namely, the vehicle-weight tax and the long-distance haulage tax.
In spite of the new description, the "axle taxl described in CM on December 8 — Edi is still very unpopular — particularly since its amount was drastically raised, some time ago, from 525 to 750 francs for vehicles up to 184_ tons (fully
loaded, and from 385 to 550 francs for trailers in the same weight category.
Axle weight solution
Speaking of axles and vehicle weights, some foreign hauliers using French equipment sometimes have to solve problems arising from different regulations in the countries involved, A case in point is the necessity for British operators, for instance, to comply with a home regulation limiting rear-axle loading on two-axle tractors to 10 tons, while the French limit allowed on similar vehicles is 13 tons. One English firm coped with this hurdle by purchasing a tandem-steer three-axle tractor with an 11 ft 2 in wheelbase, to hitch to French-made 11.8m semi-trailers. The long front overhang of such trailers usually imposes more weight than legally permitted on conventional British tractors, but the special tractor enables that English operator to operate safely on both sides of the Channel.
Another example of the kind of difficulties which European road transporters must overcome on international traffic operations lies in the so-called "truck war" which developed between the Netherlands and West Germany when the famous "Leber Plan" was announced in the latter country to put the German railroads on a sound operating basis — at the expense of long-distance highway haulage.
CM readers may recall that the plan . proposed to slap a heavy tax on trucks and a complete ban on long-distance bulk transport by road, affecting such products as building materials, steel, grain. Moreover, provisions of the plan called for the overall number of Dutch trucks on West German territory on any one day to be limited to 1,050.
The astute Dutch, however, had found a subtle way of beating the Germans to the business draw. The transport licences for authorized Dutch trips on West German soil were to be issued by the Netherlands government on behalf of the German authorities, but the job was delegated to a private Dutch body known as the International Road Transport Organization. Did they take liberties with the regulations? Whichever way the truth may lie, the result was a reported proliferation of over-limit Dutch trucks circulating in West Germany some say a daily average of between 2,300 and 4,000!
So nil desperandum.