ALB FREIGHT
Page 20
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RHA officer argues
for the industry
JOHN OCKENDEN, Head of Communications of the Road Haulage Association, told a distribution contractors conference that industry is only as good as its transport, and in Britain today he said in nine cases out of ten, that means road transport. "An expanding and well-founded road haulage industry is of prime importance if Britain is to maximise her industrial efficiency and offer realistic international competition," said Mr Ockenden.
HIGH LEVELS of industrial efficiency are made possible by an active road haulage industry, resulting in the improvement of the competitive advantage of British industry on the international scale, he said. This helps Britain's drive to export, aids the national economy, and results in more employment and an increase in general prosperity.
Mr Ockenden told the conference that the efficiency of all sectors of the economy is dependent upon the transport sector. He argued that a thriving road haulage industry is of prime importance if British industry is to minimise its wastage and increase its productivity to the maximum level.
The RHA spokesman said the preference shown by industry for road transport was largely based on the intrinsic competitive advantages that it has over rail for many types of goods traffic. The relative merits of road and rail vary largely with a' weight/bulk factor and a distance factor. Road transport does not suffer from the difficulties of double handling leading to delays, damage and misdirections. "Road carriage is not accompanied by the documentation of a complicated system largely reliant on shunting. The problems of rail's unscheduled deliveries are, in some cases, difficult to overcome, and rail is faster only after a threshold of 100-200 miles and daily flows of hundreds rather than tens of tons. Typically insurance rates are higher on rail than road carriage,he said.
He explained that the difficulties apply equally to long, as short-haul rail journeys, but that trunking by rail becomes progressively more profitable as the distances involved increase.
-Modernisation is proceeding apace, pallet-control, and containerisation being the two most advanced techniques