LEAVES FROM THE INSPECTOR'S NOTEBOOK.
Page 28
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
The "Pirate." Freight Finding.
IT SEEMS -a good long while since those of us who are Londoners, or who come to London with sufficient frequency to appreciate many of its " specialities," experienced the eccentricities of the " pirate."
The pirate, as most of us remember, was either the owner or the hirer of an omnibus which was not the property of one of the big operating concerns. He was at his prime in the horsed bus ethys, and there were a great many hundreds of him in the few years preceding the introduction of the motorbus. He existed in certain provincial centres, but his activities were of a milder nature and were in a way condoned by the public who patronized him from time to time.
So far as the Metropolis is concerned, he has been quite dead now for some years. His is an extinct type. The driver and conductor of a pirate bus often made a very good Jiving out of their irregular occupation. They drove a vehicle which, was licensed by Scotland Yard as fit for public service, and their horses passed muster. They came on duty when they thought they would, and they ran on routes that from time to time appeared to them to be most lucrative.. They had all sorts of wonderful ideas as to the restrictions of the authorized Fare Board, and the uninitiated—whom by constant practice they very quickly recognized—they persuaded to part with fares which were on a particularly generous scale. Sixpence from one end of Oheapside to the other was no uncommon thing in the days when one could travel miles for id. by the regular and recognized routes and services.
He was at his best, the pirate, in the horsed bus days. His equipment was not such a costly one, and he could hire it. He shared his spoils with his conductor, and much of the fare-getting was due to the persuasive eloqudnce and activities of the man who drove the horses.
With the coming of the motorbus he soon disappeared, and attempts to perpetuate the calling by means of mechanical vehicles were very few and far between, although such attempts were made. Privately owned machines were occasionally used quite legitimately, and recognized owners of horsed buses or niotorbuses—even though it was in quiteia small way—always were careful to keep faith. with the public.
In the course of the history of the past eight or ten. years, the public passenger traffic on the roads of the Metropolis had passed entirely into the hands of what is really now, to all intents and purposes, a. huge monopoly. Fortunately it is a monopoly that is wisely guided and controlled, and the management is in theJhands of broad-minded officials who take a very generous-view of their duties to the community in the posts they hold. The public is not by any means a loser by reason of this,monopoly: nevertheless, it is generallyknown that no such monopoly legally arid actually exists. It is open to anybody to put up to Scotland Yard a public service carriage of approved type with a view to securing a licence to ,ply for hire in the public streets. There is nothing, from the point of view of licensing, to prevent another company starting business in London to-day, unless, of course, one takes into account the difficulty of securing, adequate garage facilities and the very practical difficulty of meeting
32 the London General Omnibus organization on its own ground. It is not altogether an unlikely thing that we may yet again see pirates on the road in London. But they will not be pirates in the old sense, as the game of playing fast and loose with fare schedules has gone for good. They would merely be pirates because they did not belong, at any rate for the time being, to the big traffic organization which now virtually controls this class of business in and around London.
There is another class of pirate, and he plies his trade with comparative immunity in the provinces: he is the pirate eab driver. -In many of the big provincial centres efficient. control of the fares to be charged is still not enforced. The London motorcab business undoubtedly is the best controlled of this crass of public service that exists throughout the country. In many places taximeters are not a necessity, and strangers, who are very often the largest users of rnotorcabs, are left entirely to guess what schedule is in operation for fares in the particular district in which the hiring takes place.
It is high time more control was exercised in this matter in many provincial cities and towns. The public are used to matorcab riding, and would make a lot more use of these vehicles if they did not feel that they were left guessing very largely as to what they were . buying when they entered the vehicle. The pirate has not altogether disappeared therefore ; he May pop up again in the Metropolis, but there he will be a very well-behaved pirate, but his relation in the provinces—particularly his motoreab relation —is still a very active member of the species. It is bad for that branch of the industry that he should be active.
Freight Finding.
I wonder exactly how far the financial side of the Freight Exchange idea has gone to date. Lots of shots have been made at it, and no one, until recently, had succeeded in overcoming the inherent difficulties of the problem, which I have, several times in the past, tried to indicate. The principal stumbling block has, of course, been the difficulty of finding sufficient matches, quickly, between load and lorry and destination and date and hour. There are so very many factors to bring into line—and to bring into line quickly—that, in the writer's opinion, the percentage of misfits will always overload any organization of which the principal activity is to find lorries for loads and loads for lorries.
Then, once a match has been made, the temptation for both parties to carry on without the assistance of the Exchange is very great. If the Exchange puts through an ineffective call," it cannot expect to make money out of the job. Nor can it anticipate receiving commissions in a large proportion of cases on future business carried once an introduction has been effected. The proportion of cases suoh as the following purely fanciful one always bids fair to preponderate to a disconcerting degree. A three ton lorry carrying two tons of sheepskina will leave Newbury for Braintree at 10.30 a.m. on Wednesday, the 14th; a load of two tons of high-class furniture is offered from Marlborough to Ipswich on Tuesday, -the 12th. And there are only two days to arrange matters. It remains to be seen if arrangements can be made in time, Who will be responsible for such an assorted load, and whether one consignor will break' faith as to time, etc., and so disconcert the other.