Political Commentary
Page 27
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Survival of the Fittest
By JANUS
"Over the years rates control has vacillated between one objective and another and has now settled down on a 'free for all' basis with competition as the principal protection for users and survival of the fittest' the rule of the day for providers of transport."
G. W. Quick Smith MR. QUICK SMITH has not said the half of it. As the cantankerous Old Year shudders to its close, Nature, red in tooth and claw, seems to have taken up her abode in the transport industry_ From every quarter can be heard the sounds of conflict. The railways are challenging the hauliers, and the hauliers are squaring up to each other. Ratepayers are suing local authorities for allowing free travel for old age pensioners, and damning the Chancellor of the Exchequer for not reducing the fuel tax so that fares on corporation buses would' show a profit and relieve the rates. The Transport Tribunal has a few unkind words to say about one of the Licensing Authorities. The Government, in their Road Traffic Bill, have taken an impartial swipe at every kind of road user, including the pedestrians.
Survival of the fittest is indeed the order of the day. In an attempt to prove that he at least is a candidate for survival, Mr. Quick Smith himself is not above a little skilful prodding in the general direction of independent hauliers. He avoids the full-blooded • approach, perhaps not so much because of any oldfashioned ideas about gentlemanly .restraint as because his position is anomalous. As a member of the board of management of British Road ,Services, he would like to keep that organization as strong and as large as possible, but he also has a duty to help dispose of
most of the assets.
Offhand Arguments For this reason he puts on the expression of a man firing a gun that somebody else has loaded. He speaks of "a body of informed opinion" that would prefer the process of disposal to stop more or less at the stage now reached, and he hardly disguises his agreement. He even supplies a few offhand arguments. Such a course would shorten the period of uncertainty, he points out. It would also preserve the advantages of large-scale organization, without sacrificing the benefits of competition.
Mr. Quick Smith assumes rather too hastily that there wilt be no buyers of large transport units, or no large buyers of transport units (which is not quite the same thing). As he visualizes the future course of events unless some indulgent angel intervenes on his behalf, some 18,000 vehicles, equal to the number acquired from those .former independent hauliers that operated at least 50 vehicles each, would be split up among a large number of small owners, apart from 3,500 vehicles retained by B.R.S. antL3,500 in the parcels service.
As evidence to support his assumption, Mr. Quick Smith points out that most of the demand so far has come from existing operators wishing to add one or two vehicles to their fleet. He misses the point that such a process does not increase the number of owners, and he has forgotten that many operators have bought, or hope to buy, several small units, each with an aggregate of several vehicles. The sale of innumerable small units does not mean that these will form the eventual pattern of the road haulage industry.
It may be a pity to analyse this part of Mr. Quick Smith's lecture too closely, for the assumption that there will be no large buyers provides him with the opportunity to make a testament of British Road Services by enumerating the advantages of a large-scale organization. "The experience of B.R.S.," he. says, "has shown that there are certain things that a bigger undertaking can do which a smaller one cannot." .Obvious examples are the organization of trunk and regular services and the network of parcels services, adds Mr. Quick Smith, thus begging the question of whether such services were available before nationalization.
He gives impressive examples of research undertaken by B.R.S. on such ,things as the use of light alloys and plastics, braking, the design of trailer and semi-trailer chassis, and the extension of the functions of the oil engine. Aids to operation have included the greater use of articulated vehicles, mechanical handling and the use of pallets. There have also been training schemes for transport managers and technicians.
Less Illuminating
On the subject of rites Mr. Quick Smith is less illuminating. Increases in costs in the past two years" have been absorbed withOut any adjustment of rates." If this is true of B.R.S., it is also true of most other hauliers. "Further improvements might have . made possible a general reduction in rates." The general report is that such a reduction has in fact come to pass. perhaps not as a result of " further improvements" but of competition from the buyers of transport units.
Mr. Quick Smith has a good deal to say in favour of a rates structure, but he admits that such a thing is not possible itt an industry made up of small businesses. Rates vary according to.market conditions: The Jhaulier makes his profit " by widening the margin between the
price obtainable in'the • market and his costs, by lowering costs as a result of more efficient management or by -skilful operations in the market." In an industry of small units enforcement of a statutory rates system would be well 'nigh impossible. .
Many people may think Mr. Quick Smith's rates structure is being jettisoned in a good cause.
After gently chiding those people who would break up B.R.S. and throw the rites structure to the dogs, Mr. Quick Smith comes to his main suggestion, which is the setting up of a Royal Commission, that last infirmity of noble minds. The idea has this to commend it, that it comes in pat with the spirit of the New Year. Mr. Quick Smith perhaps wishes to ring in the nobler modes of life, with sweeter manners, purer laws. The terms of reference of his Royal Commission would include a review of reports and recommendations .issued by other Royal Commissions, advisory councils, departmental committees and the like in. the past 25 years. While this was being done there would presumably be a truce in the world of transport. The railways would lower their fists and the hauliers shake hands with each other. The Disposal Board would itself be up for dispoial, and the Minister of Transport _would take a long holiday.