Haulage Industry Slandered with Statistics
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NEVER was an industry so slandered with statistics. If half the allegations made against us were true, most of our drivers would be in custody and Most of our vehicles would be confined to their garages." With these words Mr. D. 0. Good, national chairman of the Road Haulage Association, emphasized at the Southampton sub-area's annual dinner on Friday that the haulage industry's opponents were changing their line of attack.
" In their efforts to justify the threat of renationalization the Socialists must have realized that they could hardly fault us on efficiency, especially when one compares the standards of the road haulage industry today with those during the highwater period of nationalization. Our opponents, therefore, switched their attack to the standards of our vehicles and conduct of our drivers, and tried to prove their point by quoting every figure they could that might seem to show us at a disadvantage.
"What I particularly resent ", said Mr. Good, "is the constant suggestion that our vehicles are invariably overloaded1 believe one member of the House of Lords suggested that this applied to 95 per cent of our journeys—and on the other hand that our vehicles are undermaintained. in the same way we are accused of underpaying and overworking our drivers."
The fallacy in most of the statistics, he said, was that they were taken as applying solely to the road haulage industry, the critics conveniently forgetting that nearly all the available statistics related to the whole of the road goods transport: of the 11 million goods vehicles today, R.H.A. members operated just over 100,000, perhaps six or seven per cent of the whole. He did not wish to suggest that all hauliers were perfect and that everyone else was a villain, but it was time that some of the people who " would hang, draw and quarter us on the basis of statistics" tr:ed to find out what really went on.
Mr. Good said he would like some of these so-called experts to take a closer look at the average haulier's operational efficiency, at the skill shown by the haulage driver and, for good measure, at the number of rules and regulations which operator and driver have to contend with.