'People notice most of all the vehicles that get in their way
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FOR what may have seemed like several weeks, although it was no more than two or three, readers of certain newspapers have been confronted almost clay by day with the image of the road haulage industry, an entity which has been the subject of much and sometimes passionate discussion over the years, but which seems never to have been visualized clearly enough for one to set down its lineaments and dimensions. The general public, as spectators, have perhaps had a more distinct picture, and it is this which has been paraded recently for everyone to see.
The details can now, therefore, be given for the first time. The image of the road haulage industry is apparently 19 ft. wide and 65 ft. long. Its weight is less exactly given on various occasions as anything between 35 and 100 tons. In appearance, to judge from a good many of the available pictures, it is not unlike the somewhat surprising creations, usually described even more surprisingly as a woman, or as the spirit of the working class, or as industrial aspiration, which it has become the modern habit to erect in the forecourts of new blocks of offices or outside new factories, perhaps as an ingenious method of getting rid of the surplus building materials.
It could also be said that the image looks very much like a ship's propeller, and this is what in fact it is. Its agonizing progress on a low-loader from Lancashire to Cornwall has been followed in the Press as painstakingly as the first ascent of Everest or the crossing of Antarctica. The manufacturers of the propeller, the operators of the vehicle and the crew of the ship for which it was destined, whatever their feelings on other aspects of the case, at least have not had a moment's anxiety about where the consignment was to be found. All they had to do was to look at the morning's paper.
FRAUGHT WITH ACCIDENTS
According to the reports, every chapter in the story was fraught with accidents. At the outset, the police halted the vehicle on several occasions to let other somewhat faster traffic through. Another vehicle broke down in its path and had to be winched out of the way. Soon afterwards the dynamo burned out. In the towns, bollards and other obstructions caused lengthy delays and paving stones cracked under the weight. The police in Taunton refused to allow the load to enter until special gear had been brought to alter its position and so reduce the overall width. On the Devon hills an extra towing unit had to he introduced and the towbar then crashed through the radiator.
The driver came from Rugby, the load from Birkenhead, and the destination was Falmouth. These are evocative place names in the world of transport, even if not in road transport. The saga of the ill-fated propeller evoked protests, in some cases it ought to have gone by rail and subsequently, when the railways showed no great enthusiasm for the task, that coastwise shipping should have been used. One shipping company boasted its ability to do the job in three days instead of nearly three weeks, sidestepping B22 the question of cost and ignoring the inference that its sales department must badly need strengthening.
The shrewdest cut of all was a parliamentary question, which forced the Minister of Transport to reply that he was reviewing the best means of dealing with future applications to carry this ,kind of load by road. Mr. Marples added that an application had already been refused for the carriage by road back to Birkenhead of the damaged propeller for which the replacement had been needed. The ultimate result may be harsher measures to force the abnormal and indivisible load off the road.
NOT ANTAGONISTIC
Operators in general may believe they are not affected. They have no inclination, and often no equipment, to carry outsize loads, and even where they have to do so they are on the whole by no means antagonistic to the recent new provons for marking the loads, carrying extra men, informing the authorities, and so on. If extra precautions make the journey safer, there are no serious objections.
Unfortunately, the story does not stop there. The motorist, who now virtually represents the public as a whole, has always at the back of his mind the annoyance caused by what he would describe as the road haulage industry. He would be lucky if he has escaped at one time or another delays caused by the passage of an outsize load. He has never been convinced by the response to his protests, and now has at least one indisputable case where most of the reasons usually advanced for sending awkward traffic by road do not seem to apply.
The case is also one where the road haulage industry can do little to defend itself. To say that the circumstances were exceptional does not take the counter-argument very far. To suggest that road transport was the best, and may have been the only, method available invites a rude response. The probability that there was a difference of up to £1,000 in the prices by land and by sea does not take into account the cost of traffic delays, police supervision, damage to the roads and so on.
THE BLAME
More than one agency was involved. The manufacturer made the decision to send the propeller by road; the company owning the damaged ship may well have appreciated that this was the method normally found most suitable. As far as the public is concerned, the haulier only is to blame and realization of this fact may account for the frequent omission these days of what was once the customary apology by the manufacturer of heavy equipment and machinery for any trouble that his traffic might cause. The haulier cannot escape public gaze and public censure. For which reason, he cannot easily disguise or manipulate the public image which is formed of his industry, and which for the most part is composed of those features which attract attention. People notice most of all the vehicles that get in their way, and will persist in regarding these as typical.