Pickfords Win Low-loader Appeal
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AN appeal by the Transport Holding (Pickfords) to the Transport Tribunal in London last week was described by their counsel, Mr. R. Yorke, as "the most important" they had ever brought before the Tribunal since licensing began.
The company was appealing against a decision of the North Western deputy Licensing Authority granting Mobile Lifting Services Ltd., of Liverpool, a new B licence. This was for a heavy low loader to carry plant and equipment, which had been or was to be dismantled or installed by the licence holders—plant and equipment belonging to Tarmac Civil Engineering Ltd.— throughout Britain.
Five other firms also appealed against the decision—Elliott (Hauliers) Northern Ltd., of York; Robert Wynn and Sons Ltd., of Newport (Mon.); W. L. Roebuck Ltd., of Heswall (Cheshire): L. V. Brooksbarik Ltd„ of Hull; and • H. R, D. Maconche Ltd., of Stockport. The Tribunal allowed the appeals. Their reasons are to be given later.
Mr. Yorke told the Tribunal that if the decision was. upheld Pickfords stood to lose probably 70 per cent or more of all their heavy haulage work. The decision was, in their submission, absurd and simply struck the ground from underneath -people who held themselves out as public hauliers.
Mobile Lifting Services had said that as they were in a special position, which entailed moving and lifting or placing into position or erecting very heavy equipment, they ought to have transport facilities which would enable them to move the plant to its destination.
"Our answer to that is that this special situation is our business and if that principle be right we must go out of business ", said Mr. Yorke. He contended that on this case the future of the special types of work in this country must denend. Was it to be done by people who held themselves out as public hauliers for anyone who wanted to use them? Or was it to be dono by the firms who did the erection at the other end?
For the other objectors Mr. G. P. Crowe submitted that it was necessary for them to be able to co-ordinate the whole of their operation. There was no real and cogent evidence to show that there was some particular difficulty in continuing to use existing hauliers for this operation, he said.
Mr. J. Edward Jones, for Mobile Lifting Services, contended there was no scintilla of evidence that if the decision was upheld it would undermine the heavy haulage industry. The question, he said, was whether, in this modern age, people who were concerned with handling equipment of this kind should not have their own transport. They were not going to get rid of the outside haulier; all they were asking to have was the facility of their own vehicle. With a tight programme it gave them more elbow room.