In Your Opinion

23rd September 1966, Page 246

23rd September 1966

Page 246

Page 246, 23rd September 1966 — In Your Opinion

Noticed an error?
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.

Bell of doom for small operators?

I HAVE examined the extracts of the COMMERCIAL MOTOR Tables of Operating Costs in your issue of August 26. The recommended minimum charges for operating coaches would make amusing reading if the situation were not so serious for many small coach firms. Some of my coaches average about 400 miles a week, while others only cover some 200, and nothing would delight me more than to be able to get away with charging 4s. a mile for a 41-seater petrol-engined coach as your tables recommend.

Let me make it absolutely clear that I do not for one moment doubt the accuracy of your tables. I have long realised the true costs of operating coaches but it would appear that a very high percentage of coach operators have not a clue. The very best rate! can charge is 3s. 6d. for short-distance work and certain very popular shortdistance public tours. The bulk of my work for 41-seaters is done at what is in this area a high rate, namely 2s. 6d. a mile, and I am the dearest operator for many miles around! On workers' contract services my rate averages just short of 2s. a mile, schools contracts about 2s. 3d. a mile including double-deckers, while certain dedicated clients such as school sports outings and old people's clubs are charged at 2s. a mile.

May I repeat (probably to your surprise) that I am the dearest operator for some 30 miles radius excepting of course the monopoly services operated by the nationalized bus group (and only the monopoly services!). The nationalized bus group has raised its stage and express bus service fares by some 700 per cent in the past 10 years while their private and contract charges have been increased by all of 5 per cent! In fact many of their private hires are done at lower rates than ten years ago.

You may well ask how do many private operators have modern vehicles if this is the case. Perhaps someone can tell me because I just do not know. What I do know is that I have the absolute maximum hire purchase commitment I can possibly afford, I charge the highest rates for many miles around,! have a great deal more work than any of my direct private competitors, and yet they all seem able to operate better buses than I can buy. Will someone please explain? Perhaps it is because I prefer having four full-time drivers to my 10 buses instead of a ratio of nil to five or more, also that I seem to pay the entire educational costs of the child population of my county through rates on my garage instead of keeping my vehicles in a ploughed field, or perhaps it is because I insist on keeping my vehicles in a safe state of maintenance.

I work something like 18 hours a day seven days a week, make hardly any profit at all to put in my own pocket, and yet Brothers Brown, Wilson and Callaghan insist that I, evil, profiteering, capitalist that I am, should absorb 100 per cent increases in the rates I pay on my garage, 25s. per driver in Selective Employment Tax (I am told I will get it back in a few months but am not told how to find it), higher fuel costs etc., etc., etc. I wonder why people of pioneering and go-ahead spirit emigrate?

I am a member of the PVOA, and at the beginning of the summer I wrote to them asking them to fight for our right to survive and requested that the Association approach the Traffic Commissioners and ask them to direct the nationalized bus group to raise their private and contract rates to the same level as their stage and express fares, or at least raise the former at the same rate. Also to take action and make the Government freeze the rateable value to be paid on property, and stop the Selective Employment Tax. They replied that they were doing everything possible, but the result is still nil as far as I can see.

I have done everthing I know to get a better deal for all coach operators, private and nationalized, especially in parking facilities in towns. I have often gone to extreme lengths and ignored police instructions to try to get better conditions. At one theatre in a city, the police were doing anything they pleased, and on one occasion they were actually directing 30 ft. x 8 ft. coaches round a block of houses where the road had been reduced to 9 ft. wide by parked cars, there was an acute right-angle bend at a blind corner, and two-way traffic. Obviously there was complete deadlock and several coaches were damaged in the manoeuvring that followed. I instructed my drivers to disregard police instructions in future until they showed some sense and succeeded in getting better conditions for a while, but eventually I realised that I had come to be out on a limb, fighting the entire police force on my own and getting myself, my coaches and my drivers a bad name.

Some leader must emerge soon or there will be no small private operators left. I know that the Government intend offering a rural subsidy, but I am convinced that it will end up being used by the nationalized bus group as one more weapon against the small private hirer. I have sadly concluded that I will probably never be able to own a brand-new coach. My heart and life is in coaching and! doubt if I could ever break away from it completely, but I am at present looking into alternative lines of business which would return a decent profit and allow me to continue to operate coaches. Very, very few people in this country realize the true state of affairs, and with the majority of local councils controlled by the same party as the Government, the bell of doom is sounding for all small men.

One has only to lift a daily paper and read the various Government Ministers' advice to housewives to "avoid any firm which raises prices" to see the seeds of Eastern-style propaganda. Look at the findings (?) of the Prices and Incomes Board—laundry firms are accused of overcharging and directed to reduce their costs by amalgamating or cutting down on staff while the Coal Board (nationalized of course) gets the go-ahead for yet another price increase.

The mass of the people in this country are "workers" while we, evil, capitalists are the minority. Could it be that the Rhodesian "Rebel" Government is in fact the most efficient way to run a country, by allowing only people of responsibility to choose the people who will govern?

A SMALL COACH HIRER, Scotland.

Different Method Preferred I READ with great interest Mr. P. A. C. Brockington's article "The case for the steerable axle" in your August 26 issue. Personally I do not favour the caster-action axle, as it materially reduces the resistance to side-slip and under unfavourable conditions may prove dangerous even though the proportion of load carried is relatively small.

You will find enclosed a copy of a folder describing the American Hoobler undercarriage which, in my opinion, solves the steering problem in an admirable manner even though it is not ideal for backing-up. It is simple, vice-free and entirely avoids tyre scrub.

I have no connection whatsoever with the manufacture or sale of the Hoobler product.

ERLING JAHR, P. Nielsen Speditionsforretning, Oslo 1 The Hoobler system has widely spaced axles on a tandem bogie which is mounted on an A-frame, the A-frame being attached to the trailer chassis through a pivoting fifth-wheel. The front axle itself pivots on the front of the A -frame, but the rearmost axle is firmly fixed to the A-frame. The effect is that, as the vehicle turns, the front bogie wheels follow the natural tendency to swing out on the curve, while the rear wheels follow a path similar to, but just inside, the track followed by the tractive-unit driving-axle wheels. In principle it is not unlike some German systems.—Ed I