Linking Licensing Directly with Maintenance
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IN some traffic areas Licensing Authorities are following the lead given by Mr. D. I. R. Muir, the Metropolitan Licensing Authority, who has instituted a system of checking the standard of maintenance of the vehicles of A. and B-licensed operators before the determination of applications—especially "renewal" applications —which are made. Some operators will doubtless consider this to be yet another irksome addition to licensing formalities but, quite apart from the fact that surely all must agree that fair and proper checks can be only of benefit to the industry and the public, such a system can be of direct practical advantage to operators appearing In licensing courts.
I came across an excellent example of this when I visited the South Wales court recently, where a Cardiff operator, B. W. Rees and Son Ltd., had applied for the continuation of a 13-vehicle B licence with modification—the modification being to add a maintenance vehicle to the fleet.
After the application had been lodged a vehicle examiner called and inspected the vehicles and maintenance facilities and his report was before Mr. Ronald Jackson, the Licensing Authority, at the time of the hearing.
Reading aloud to the applicant, Mr. Jackson said this; "The report says that although your maintenance facilities arc good at the moment, they will be further improved if I granted you this vehicle." The application was duly granted.
Like his Metropolitan colleague, Mr. Jackson feels that every opportunity should be taken to link maintenance directly with licensing and this is as direct a link as can be possible under the present regulations.
Mr. Muir, by the way, started the systematic maintenance checking of the vehicles of A-licence " renewal " applicants at the beginning of last year and, as a result, more than one operator has found himself appearing in court to answer questions about his vehicle maintenance when, normally, his application would have been dealt with in chambers. Since January of this year, Mr. Jackson in South Wales has followed suit and— as indicated above—he receives reports from his officers who now automatically visit the premises of hauliers who apply for licences.
Surprisingly enough, however, while hauliers and others interested in both areas look upon the schemes with favour, there is a behind-the-scenes feeling in Road Haulage Association circles in both areas that once again the Aand B-licensed hauliers are being purged, while their C-licence counterparts go free.
As things stand at present, the C-licensee does escape this check. But I gather it is purely a question of staff shortages and I feel it would be a safe wager that, given the staff, in the Metropolitan and South Wales Areas at least, Contract A-, Band C-licence applicants will eventually be embraced by the schemes. the discretion of the Licensing Authority in these matters is wider in the case of trailers than it is in the case of tractor portions and that there is nothing to stop him authorizing individual trailers as well if he considers it desirable."
"The tragedy is ", Mr. Kenny pointed out, "that a trailer does not have a log book."
During his decision—in which he decided to take no licensing action against R.A.H. Transporters—Mr. Hanlon referred to the question of the interchangeability of trailers. He considered this issue to be separate from the question of trailer weights as such and said that it might clear the air considerably if "all these companies "—and presumably he meant all operators with more semitrailers than tractor units and who made full use of articulation—submitted lists of the number of trailers in their possession.