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A Joint BR-BRS Parcels and Sundries Service
Page 38
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—SOME IMPLICATIONS EXAMINED BY JOHN DARKER, AMBOY!
AR. TOM FRASER'S recent Parliamentary statement, reported in "The Commer11'1 cial Motor" last week, that he hoped to announce "quite soon an arrangement under which British Rail and British Road Services will jointly operate a new parcels and sundries service throughout the country" is highly intriguing.
It arises, apparently, from studies put in hand by the Minister some time ago. Though it may appear to be a reversion to the kind of scheme envisaged by the British Transport Commission around 1951 it should not be taken to represent a stone in a revived 1947 structure. For Mr. Fraser indicated that though it would have been easy for him to return to the provisions of the 1947 Act, and he was not saying "there may not be a case for establishing some kind of central authority" he felt it was better for the Government to identify particular problems and bring forward solutions. Incidentally, if this planned joint parcels and smalls service is the first recommendation from the Ministry's backroom boys, others are promised about the end of the year.
Will it Work?
The first reaction of transport men will be to question if the proposal is a runner. Clearly, a joint service is possible, and if it could be made to work efficiently, industry might welcome it, But the trade union reactions towards the introduction of liner trains must raise the vital question of union attitudes to what, in terms of transport organization is a pretty revolutionary, or at least a drastic proposal, (1 would not go along with Mr. Geoffrey Wilson, MP, who referred in the debate to a reorganized parcel delivery service, and buses meeting trains, as " quite small matters of that sort.") Mr. Fraser conceded that the BTC did not make much progress in the sphere of road-rail co-ordination during the time it was responsible, but he affirmed . . "if there is the will to make substantial arrangements I am sure they can be made."
His Cabinet colleague, Mr. Frank Cousins, who replied to the debate (which unhappily mixed transport with technology) was no less confident that transport co-ordination would not founder on the rock of union intransigence. "Of course, we can get co-ordination if we set about it in the right way, if we get the understanding that it is designed not to drive men out of employment but to provide security and efficiency of operation and a higher standard of living for them."
Mr. Cousins left no doubt in anyone's mind that he is fully sold on the idea of getting goods off roads on to rails. Mr. George Strauss, who earlier in the debate had said it was obviously in the country's interest that more goods should be sent by rail, when challenged withdrew the word obvious and substituted preferable. Mr. Cousins (who seldom talked thus to an audience of road transport members as General Secretary of the TGWU) said he repeated Mr. Strauss's original word. "It is obvious ", he declared, "If something is not done about it soon, traffic in this country will come to a standstill. Something needs to be done and it is therefore obvious."
If words mean anything at all, and they are matched with deeds, Mr. Cousins will use his great gifts to persuade TGWU members to collaborate with NUR members in a reorganized national parcels and smalls service. Quite clearly, if the separately organized drivers choose to go their separate ways, as all previous experience suggests, the only harvest from Mr. Fraser's well-intentioned plan will be bitter wrangling.
Even if we assume that the rail and road parcels drivers can be made to pull happily in double harness, for a joint .parcels/smalls service to work will demand intimate collaboration at white collar and managerial staff level. There is little tradition of this kind of harmony; rather the reverse. The reasons are rooted in history and are well known to the respective staffs; they cannot be wiped out by oratory, or by a centralized fiat, which sends down the BR and BRS managerial chains of command the magic talisman, co-operatel At the planning level, there are obvious economies to be made from joint parcels and smalls collection and delivery arrangements. Lightly loaded rail c. and d. vehicles were a common sight for years; and if the new rail freight concentration depots have improved vehicle loadings appreciably, there has never been a case, in my view, for two locally managed State transport fleets to carry out an identical function, often getting in each other's way on their rounds, or in the High Street.
Economies in View The organization of a common fleet under a single management—at least at local level—could throw up a considerable number of vehicles and drivers. Major alignment of documentary systems, communications networks, and so on, would effect economies in clerical and supervisory staffs, though these' would be of less immediate effect.
Fleet standardization, and combined fleet maintenance and overhaul facilities are other obvious possibilities which could save a lot of money and labour. Here, of course, engineering unions would be involved. Their reactions to all this is anyone's guess.
BR's national freight sundries plan conceived during Lord Beeching's era has a long way to go before it can offer any
effective competition to BRS Parcels and the many private parcels carriers providing a national or specific route service. Contrasting with a new sundries terminal recently opened by BR at Sheffield—a gigantic building, 960 ft. long, with 15,000 sq. yd. of floor space at wagon floor level, and fully equipped for warehousing functions—the typical passenger station, never designed for parcels work, continues to represent the norm. The new rail plan for c. and d. parcels traffic in London, which will replace 18 terminals with six, is already meeting heavy weather, with criticisms from the public, complaining of slow parcels deliveries, and from staff, who resent the new zoning arrangements and the revised documentation this involves.
As to the profitability of parcels traffics, Mr. A. R. Dunbar stressed in his recent presidential address to the Institute of Transport that this was one of the most costly forms of public transport. Some big operators, he said, "were losing a great deal of money ". Was he referring to BR, I wonder?
Beyond Capacity
Mr. Dunbar concluded that parcels and small lots under one ton represented a field "in which the sheer volume of traffic seems to have outgrown our capacity to plan for it ". In earlier days parcels traffic by passenger train was an excellent idea, when the volume of traffic on offer could be cooed with by frequent services and frequent collections from station platforms. But this traffic grew "to a point where it had to be kept off main line trains, arid accumulated for special parcels trains. Branch line train services began to be pruned, so that traffic began to accumulate at transfer points. It is many • years now since the point was reached where the conditions which justified the original conception of parcels by passenger train ceased to exist. The result has been to duplicate at passenger stations, which were not designed for their solution, the same problems as arise at goods stations handling ' smalls ' traffic —how to provide for the accumulation of traffic, how to handle it, and how to make room for collection and delivery vehicles."
Whatever the ultimate result of Mr. Fraser's brainchild, one will hope that if a marriage is arranged between BR and BRS on the smalls/parcels side, each will avoid trying to dump unwanted traffic on the other.
BRS Parcels used to hold rail consignment books in which were entered parcels for "out of service" areas, and BR, whose ubiquitous iron horses, every one knows, cover every village and hamlet in the country, had the unenviable and unprofitable task of ultimately delivering the parcel by their own lorries. This was as cool an example of one State enterprise profiting at another's expense that I know of.