Here's to the Next Time
Page 48
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W1TH characteristic euphoria, ' road transport operators will cling until the last moment to the hope that there will be no more rationing after the present period ends on April 7. Nothing will shake their belief that the situation is nothing like as bad as the Government claim, They all have their favourite stories about fuel suppliers with storage tanks brimming over and not a customer in sight; or about tankers reaching this country and unable to find anywhere to deliver their load.
The opinion that most frequently 'finds expression is that the Government are prolonging the agony for their own purposes, sinister or otherwise. Rationing has driven goods back on to the railways for the first time since the war, and the railways can do with the extra revenue. London buses are running to schedule for the first time in a generation, and the chairman of London' Transport has spoken of the folly of allowing the situation to drift back to normal. The Treasury are taking an extra shilling in tax on every gallon of fuel used on the roads, and the tax must revert to 2s. 6d. a month after the end of rationing.
In the last resort, of course, road operators, like other people, must accept the Government's assessment of the situation, and make economies to the extent required of them. They expect that, in return, the Government will take them into their confidence as much as possible. Since the rationing period passed the halfway mark, operators have speculated increasingly, not so much on whether there will be a further period, as on the form that the next round of rationing will take.
The Point Missed Too many official statements have missed the point. Typical was the assurance given by Mr. G. R. H. Nugent, Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport, in the House of -Commons on February 6. The Government, said Mr. Nugent, were not ready to say whether further rationing was necessary. However, they " will make this assessment at the right time, and will give hauliers the best notice that they can of whether or not a further scheme will be necessary."
Hauliers may remember better than Mr. Nugent, who was busily engaged elsewhere at the time, the kind of notice they received of the first rationing period. The statement from the Ministry presented them with a month's warning, which was not unreasonable, also with an exercise in simple arithmetic likely to give them a gloomy answer. .
They were told, in company with other goods-vehicle operators, that they would have a weekly basic ration of two gallons for every half ton of unladen weight for vehicles running on petrol. The oiler ration would be two-thirds of this amount. In this way, a half and a third respectively would be distributed of the total amount of petrol and oil fuel normally consumed by goods vehicles. Enough would be held in reserve to enable the fraction to be raised to three-quarters in each case.
In other words, over the whole industry there was to be a cut of 25 per cent. This was to be the average, and, as the Minister recently explained to M.P.s, to the accompaniment of ironical laughter, some operators would be cut more than 25 per cent., and others less.
c20 With the possible exception of private-car owners, the only other sections of the community cut as severely as the goods transport operator were the non-industrial users of central heating, and hospitals, nursing homes and schools were excluded from this category. The use of oil for industrial purposes was to be cut by 20 per cent. For other users, no cut was made more than 10 per cent., and requirements for the railways and for coal production were to be maintained in full.
There is some evidence that hauliers had in mind launching a protest against the low figure of 75 per cent. if so, the intention was effectively drowned in the rising tide of complaints at the slow rate of progress in issuing supplementary rations. To operators who looked like getting no more than perhaps, 30 per cent. of their normal consumption, the figure of 75 per cent. seemed unattainable, and therefore infinitely desirable.
Prepare for Further Rationing If there is to he further rationing, hauliers may have a better chance of keeping the issues clear-cut. If they have not already done so, they should at once prepare and present their case for better treatment.
Factors that blurred the issue last December should not recur. Regional Transport Commissioners know what fuel has been issued in the present period, and what stocks were held by operators. There should be no *difficulty next time in making the basic issue a proportion of past consumption.
Operators should not rest their case at this point. They must attack as strongly as possible the assumption that a cut of 25 per cent is right for the road goods transport industry, when the figure for most of the rest of industry, is 10 per cent., and there is no reduction at all for their competitors, who are blatantly carrying on with their plans for the greater use of oil fuel at a time when many hauliers using the same commodity are wondering how they can remain in business.
Mr. Nugent has endeavoured to justify the continued conversion to Diesel engines on the railways. Some services have already been introduced, and others have been planned. "They are generally so far committed," Mr. Nugent adds, "that it would be impossible to stop them now." Road operators might well reply by referring to their own commitments that have had to be postponed without consideration of the possibilities.
Making the Best of it
Evidence so far is that the majority of hauliers has come to terms with the rationing system. Their position may become worse towards the end of the first period, when whatever fuel the Ministry have in reserve is running low. Operators' own reserves tend to fall, and the present lull in production may end, with the result that increasing demands are made upon goods carriers just when they are in the worst possible position to meet them.
Representatives of hauliers must have accumulated a good deal of evidence about their normal activities and the extent to which these have been reduced during recent weeks. The evidence can be put to no better purpose than to prove that a cut of as much as 25 per cent. in the fuel used for road transport must bring serious disadvantages to trade and industry as a whole.