• . thousands of responsible JANUS era tors are equally disturbed' WRITES
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T week hinted that road transport operators might ot be as black as some of the Licensing Authorities ainted them, and that a wider range of colours could in the Annual Reports of the Authorities in order tinguish the good operators from the bad. The totals e various types of offence certainly seem to bear out many of the Authorities say —that there is room for Nement—but more emphasis could,be laid on the fact thousands of responsible operators are equally bed at this state of affairs and would be pleased to e putting it right.
.he U.S., operators have gone over to the offensive in g with certain misdemeanours among themselves. A id group of operators who have been investigating ful practices in their own industry have paid particular ion to the individual or organization that carries goods ly. This category of offender corresponds to the operator who uses a goods vehicle without a carrier's e or in breach of the conditions of any licence that iy hold..
,se offences are not uncommon. Last year in this ry there were 3,839 convictions for unlicensed lion, and 3,063 convictions for the contravention of Lions, a total of 6,902. These figures do not help in ishing the actual number of violations, which could or 20 times as great. The difficulty of assessment is ited by the group in the U.S.. who report estimates inlawful operations varying from 1,825,000 to 1,000. Even the lowest estimate, the group maintain, this type of offence well above any other major ion of the law.
IVE MEASURES TAKEN
7 the past two years the group have taken active ires to bring the offenders to book. It is claimed that, .esult, a dozen bogus " shipper associations" have had lose down and complaints against over 1,000 anies and individuals are now being dealt with by nterstate Commerce Commission There may be a 1 here for British operators who have suffered from acursions of unauthorized competitors and may not given serious consideration to the possibility of :rted action to enlist the co-operation of the Licensing antics and the police.
e American operators have gone further in claiming the action taken is not entirely, or even primarily, leir own benefit. In describing the offender as a thief, Maintain that his chief victim is the American nation. le lowest estimate, the unlawful operator breaks the ral law once every 17 seconds, whereas the FBI ds show only one robbery of over $50 every six tes.
America, the operator who carries goods outside the avoids paying tax. The money thus lost to the wry has to be made up by the law-abiding citizen, is therefore the ultimate loser, say the investigating p. In addition, revenue at an average of £150 per is being filched from the licensed carriers. Their fixed operating costs remain the same, and they are therefore compelled to put their rates up to compensate for the stolen traffic. Once again the ultimate cost falls on the general public.
On the assumption that well over £1,000 m. is being
siphoned off " as a result of unlicensed activities, the group warn the nation that "the erosion of illegal transport could destroy our national transport system and drastically weaken our economy ". The theft of traffic on this scale might mean that many people would lose their jobs. In addition to all this, it is claimed, the weakening of the transport system would impair the efficiency of the national defence.
A literal imitation of this typical piece of transatlantic bravura would be a mistake_ All the same it has a lesson for operators in Britain, and especially hauliers. Their reputation as well as their pockets is being damaged as a result of the large number of transgressions that are being attributed to them. Where they are at fault, they should do everything they can to mit the matter right, but there is no reason why collectively they should take the responsibility for the offences of other people.
Out of the grand total of 25,390 convictions of all kinds recorded in the reports of the Licensing Authorities for 1962, how many are in fact committed by people who are not even qualified to operate? At least 3,839, or 15 per cent, of the offences may be excluded at once, since they involve the use of vehicles without a carrier's licence. Among the other categories of offence there must be many thousands more convictions where investigation might show that the offender had no right to be on the road at all.
In other words, the bona fide operators are by no means entirely to blame for the formidable catalogue of misdeed3 which forms an appendix to the reports. Most of the licensing offences could not be committed without the connivance of the customers, who in this way are obtaining an unfair advantage over their competitors who keep strictly within the law. It is worth pointing out that in any case the advantage may be limited. The wrongdoer's time is often short and he may leave his customers high and dry at short notice, or make off with a lucrative load. If he is dishonest in one particular, he may be dishonest in other ways.
When British operators come to examine statistics about their industry, they might also have a look at the bankruptcy legend which seems to be passing into the folklore of road haulage. The official records state that 258 " road haulage contractors '' went bankrupt in 1962 and that they arc now second only to builders in the list of trades. The impression thus created that nearly one per cent of hauliers go bankrupt every year is not favourable and is certainly
not true. 1 have already quoted the figure of 3,839 convictions during 1962 for carrying goods without a licence of any kind. Once convicted, many of the offenders would find it advisable to give up their illegal activities, and there might well be as many as 258 of them who would choose the bankruptcy court as their way out. Although by definition they are not hauliers, this is almost certainly how they would describe themselves.