OPINIONS and QUERIES OFFICIAL ATTITUDE TOWARDS ROAD TRANSPORT CRITICIZED MANY
Page 24
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
people will agree, as I do, with the Igews' of LYI Mr. E. E. Carter, expressed in the letter frVm him published in your issue dated November 13. it seems-to me that all this propaganda by the Government merely leads to the employment.and paying of new officials instead of getting on with the job.
Is it not time that all contractors, large and small, and particularly the latter, who are gradually being thrown out of business, should get together and challenge the policy of sending so much material by rail? I cannot believe that there is not something at the back of this, and that it is not another attempt to crush road transport, at least partially.
Road transport can certainly prove that this system of delivering goods is cheaper and quicker. Look at the latest development in connection with the railways, by which, after January 1, all goods must be carriage paid before they are sent. Even now, one has to wait from three days to a week or more before goods are obtained from the sidings. What it will be like after the railways get their money first, I do not know.
It would be interesting to obtain from the M. of W.T. a record of the amount of money that is being paid out to officials in connection with this so-called control of road transport. Even as regards the collection of scrap iron, rubber, etc., instead of paying numerous officials to .devise forms and enter up records, why could not one man in each area pay visits to the factories, etc., inspect their stocks on the spot, and give definite instructions as to what should be done with them?
The saving of rubber seems to be even more important than economy in fuel, yet thousands of the new gasproducer lorries will have to employ trailers, each of
which requires two pneumatic tyres. J. PEROW. London, E.10.
WHY ROAD TRANSPORT IS BEING LIMITED SEEMINGLY the author of the article "Bureaucratic Hindrance of the War Effort," which you published on November 6, had only one theme in his mind—thatany Governmentregulation reacting against profitmaking by hauliers is detrimental to the war effort. He therefore brings out again the old worn-out arguments against the use of rail transport, and bolsters up their feebleness with. a borough medical officer's report fer 1941, and a scientific adviser's lecture on vitamins. One would expect a roadAransport champion needing support for his case to quote up-to-date facts relating to transport.
Is this champion of disgruntled hauliers so ill-informed that he does not know that the Ministry of War Transport controls the railways as well as the roads, and that an order to divert vegetable traffic to rail would• not be made if the railways could not cope with it? The purpose of this order is to savg precious petrol and rubber, and although some vegetables may _sometimes lose part of their vitamin C, and 11 hauliers have to find other work for their vehicles, this is a small price to pay for the furtherance of the war effort. Our gallant seamen, and men in the Armed Forces, are risking and giving their lives so that he and his haulier friends can live in comfort and follow their trade, which, so far, appears to have been profitable. .
, The District transport Officer's job is to see that no more petrol is used for civilian purposes than is necese.22
sary. He knows that it will pay bigger dividends to the country in the tanks of our aeroplanes and armoured vehicles than in civilian lorries. If these operators, therefore, have any spark of public spirit in them, let them clear their minds of self-seeking ideas, and apply all their energy to helping, instead of hindering, those who
are striving to win this war. G. SMART. Welwyn Garden City., DIVERGENT VIEWS ON NATIONALIZING TRANSPORT TWOquestions in the article "What is Behind the Threat of Nationalization?" by Mr. W. G. E. Dyer. which was published in your issue dated November 13, clearly call for further comment. They are :—(1) Does
public opinion favour nationalization? (2) Would nationalization of the industry assist the war effort?
Figures for the year 1929 are given in the article in order to answer in the negative the first question; but in 1942 and in the years following the war, there will no doubt be considerably clearer thinking on the part of a much greater number of the population consisting of all classes. .
The second question should really have read :—" Will nationalization of the industry benefit the Nation as a whole when peace returns?" This is bound up with the much greater point as to whether all vital utility services —wato-, light, heat, transport, also land, and the finance which concerns them—should be controlled or left to the pre-war competitive system which, in my opinion, caused so much havoc in the economic life of the country.
Road transport, as we know it, started in a serious way after the war of 1914-1918, and soon proved itself to have numerous advantages. Like a gold strike, however, it attracted a rush of newcomers, few of whom knew anything about its economics, and many came to disaster as a result of their inexperience. The practical application of accountancy, so well recognized by "The Commercial Motor" during the many later years in which it has been trying to educate those in the wilderness, did not then exist. Finance, in the shape of hirepurchase, enabled a man with a few pounds to start in the business, and, if unsuccessful, drop out at an early date without losing very much.
Thus was founded the basis of rate-cutting, wages were slashed, driving hours became something akin to slavery, and vehicles were being run all over the country in an unsafe condition, as the files of the M. of T. Vehicle Examiners could, later on, prove.
This scramble for traffics naturally had its effects upon the railways, and the Government of the day, as would have any other Government, had to pass legislation, which might have been the road operators' .Atlantic Charter, had they grasped the fact. Hours, wages, vehicle standards, were all put on a legal .footing, but not rates. Operators, however, remained as disjointed units, fighting amongst themselves, and all the while harassed by powerful railway competitors, who, naturally, took advantage of the great political influence they wielded.
There have been many attempts by far-seeing minds, not serving the god of mammon, to get hauliers to speak with a united voice, but the vested interests amongst operators, which they so much deplore in the railways, have been an impassable barrier.
Let us hope that we have seen the last of railwayowned vehicles running parallel with railway lines for