Haulage gets new Premier
Page 15
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
HE LIFE story of Harold Russett, le Road Haulage Association's ew national chairman, is very 'Lich a case study of the British aulage industry. He has worked Dr his own parcels carriage iusiness, Premier Transport of lristol, since it was founded in 935, and has been, in charge of : for the last 36 years, writes kLAN MILLAR.
Indeed, Harold admits that here was probably no time in is life when he did not intend to vork in haulage, for his grandether started the Pioneer busiless with horses, and the family las long played a leading part in Iristol's transport community. lie family lived in the St Phillips listrict in which the business thives today, and Harold renembers helping around the fard during his school holidays ong before he was 14 and em)loyed as a trailer boy.
Harold's father established his 3wn parcels delivery business — 'remier Transport — in 1935, )nd the future national chairman N as out driving vans and aearing the strain of delivering goods by hand. "My father said A the time that I must learn to take orders before giving them," Harold recalls, but he also built up a rudimentary knowledge of the day-to-day running of what, by 1939, was a 26-vehicle fleet operating from a purpose built depot.
Apart from depriving the company of some of its vans, the outbreak of war also took Harold into the army in 1939, as part of the British Expeditionary Force that was to be evacuated from Dunkirk, back into Europe on Dday, and on into 1946 as part of the British occupation forces in Western Germany.
He was called back home in 1946, six days before his father died at the age of 47, and was thrust into the saddle with only limited managerial experience. And as if that was not enough, the business was nationalised in August 1949, and Harold was in the uncomfortable position of being a bureaucrat in the newly established Road Haulage Executive.
As group manager of the RHE's Bristol parcels business, he had what he describes as the distateful task of then taking
over the other parcels carriage businesses in the city, and having to come to terms with the fact that most of the proprietors were at least his father's age and that the depot premises had to cope with a fleet of 120 vans. Not that the Russett family did badly out of nationalisation, for his cousin Sidney was group manager for the RHE's South Bristol section, and an uncle ran East Bristol.
He did his utmost to make his parcels group run efficiently, in spite of such RHE-enforced encumbrances as two men employed to furnish area offices in Bournemouth with statistics of packages delivered, just in case an MP ever wanted to know.
I suspect he might still have nightmares over the number of forms dreamt up by the RHE, but he did rebel from time to time, such as when he defied a central directive to use a particular make of tyres on his vans. That earned him a rebuke from an internal auditor who told Harold's divisional manager: "This man has a complete disregard for categoric instructions." On the other hand, his parcels deliveries were achieved profitably.
Towards the end of its existence, the RHE had begun to grow less ludicrous, but Harold says it was still top-heavy in December 1954 when he left and bought surplus vehicles to restart the Premier business. It was a struggle to begin with, for he started trading with some of the RHE's roughest vehicles, had no premises, no customers, and was faced with a winter's quota of ice and snow.
Today, the corn pa ny runs around 100 vehicles, and has premises in Cardiff and Exeter as well as the St Phillips site which has been built up gradually as the area has been redeveloped, and which makes maximum use of the space available. The burden of daily organisation is shared with his 29-year old son, Robert, who serves on the RHA"s Western area committee and is a past chairman of YES, the RHA's young executive section.
Harold's long involvement in RHA affairs began when he took his late father's place on the Western area committee in 1946, and he took out a personal, associate membership of the association when his employment in the RHE excluded him from the full scale activities of an organisation so overtly opposed to nationalisation.
He was back on the area committee when Premier returned to business, and in 1967 he was thrust into the chair when one vice-chairman died and the other opted out of the hierarchy. That was when the Western area had to contend with the traumatic effects of the 1968 Transport Act, and Harold served for an unprecedented three-year term. He wears a commemorative wristwatch to prove it.
He has long taken an active interest in the association's functional committees, notably express carriers, where he served as chairman from 1966 to 1979. He has served for two years on the commercial committee, and was chairman of the long distance committee, and stands down in June as chairman of the industrial relations committee.
His industrial relations connections are long, and he recalls an occasion when he sat on the now defunct Road Haulage Wages Council, when the employers' side left satisfied that they had beaten the trades unions down from a 2/6d claim to a 1/9d settlement. One of his colleagues was so jubilant that he drop-kicked a bowler hat across the top of a London bus.
More recently, he learned a great deal from the 1979 national haulage strike, helping change an amateur industrial relations approach into something much more respectable. During that dispute, he was phoned at home one Saturday by the then Transport Minister, Bill Rodgers, a man for whom Harold has much respect and admiration. Rodgers wanted the RHA to meet him in his office the next morning, and Harold, fearful of the banner headlines of "RHA refuses to meet Minister" which could have followed his turning down such a request, drove to London the following morning in his Rolls-Royce. Such stylish transport was not adopted by Rodgers, who arrived soon after astride a bicycle.
Harold was elected to the present national council six years ago, although he did serve on the mammoth council of earlier years, and has spent the last four years as vice-chairman, first under John Silbermann, then Ken Rogers.
Recent months have seen the RHA achieve what some considered impossible. It has sold the streamlining of its areas into districts to a membership which has long fought shy of change, and Harold, as an astute businessman, looks forward to the expected economies attracting more members to the association. He believes that the lower running costs, and the additional membership services now being offered, will attract new members, and is convinced that the commissioning of a new "mansized" computer at the London headquarters will help area secretaries free themselves from their own desks and get out to meet members.
Harold, who already spends three days a week working on RHA affairs, and has long-established connections with the Bristol Chamber of Commerce, the local training association, and the Chartered Institute of Transport can expect to spend much time away from his own desk during the next two years. He jokes that if his first week as national chairman — elected on May 12, at the Tipping Convention from May 14 to 16, and further meetings on May 17 — is typical, he will be lucky if he ever gets near his holiday home in the South of France or the 27ft cruiser which he has moored there. It can be tough at the top.