A law unto itself
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Maintaining the roads on the Isle of Man might appear to be a doddlethe island is only 12 by 35 miles and there's not a single motorway. Mainland councils and contractors could feel envious of an apparently easy task while they are specifying oddball vehicles for road mending over larger areas. But traffic laws peculiar to the Isle of Man make life more difficult and interesting for its council.
Manx traffic laws follow those of the mainland of a few years ago. The maximum weight is 32 tons (32.51 tonnes) and you need an HGV licence to drive vehicles over three tons (3,048kg) unladen weight. But trucks don't need a tachograph or speed limiter— you don't even need an Operators Licence! However, trucks over two tons unladen weight (2,032kg) are limited to 40mph.
Cars do not have a speed limit outside built-up areas and, once a year, there are the TT races. These are run on (closed) public roads where the motorcycles reach nearly 200mph.
"The 37.75 miles of road that forms the IT course are the best maintained on the island," says Keith Lowney, transport and plant manager for the Department of Highways, Ports and Properties. Highway maintenance is carried out by six-man gangs, each of which is able to operate as an independent unit requiring both people and materials' transport.
In order to get the gangs around, Lowney was looking for a vehicle to carry up to six men, their tools and material—although not necessarily at the same time. Traditionally, this has been achieved by placing a portable workman's hut on the back of a flat bed. Not only was this outdated but it was potentially dangerous, inefficient and required the driver to have an HGV licence.
Lowney needed a vehicle with proper accommodation for the crew and room for a load but it still had to come in under the three-tonne (unladen) weight to allow for non-IIGV drivers. "Only two manufacturers, Renault and Iveco Ford, could meet the specification and stay under three tonnes", says Low-ney.
Iveco Ford's solution came in the form of a Turbo Daily 59.12 with a Whiteacres crew cab conversion ahead of a dropside tipping body. While below the HGV licence limit, the plated weight of 6 tonnes allows a good payload for any combination of crew, tools and material. A normal work cycle is to drop the crew off, collect the tarmac/aggregate, take the waste away and then return the crew to base. The crew cab not only transports the men in safety and comfort, but the bench back seat also acts as a tool store.
Wheelbase
As many of the islands roads are narrow with tight bends the natural inclination is to keep the wheelbase as short as possible. In order to maximise the load bed length Lowney decided the Daily's chassis was low enough to withstand the extra height of underfloor tipping gear. By doing so he was able to have a 3m long body on a 3.6m wheelbase—even with the crew cab extension.
Two of the vehicles were bought through Iveco Ford main dealer Peoples of Liverpool, and both Lowney and the crews are happy with their performance.
The problems didn't end with the crews' transport. To move larger quantities of aggregate, Lowney was hiring in 22-tonners on a semi-permanent basis. However, these vehicles created problems on the smaller roads and had a tendency to destroy newly Laid road surfaces when turning to go home.
Lowney enlisted the help of Ian Edwards, Iveco Ford's municipal specialist, to help draw up the vehicle specification. Using Truckfinder, Iveco Ford's vehicle specification database, they designed a 22tonner with a lifting centre axle—to prevent scrub on the new road surface. Again a short wheelbase is needed if the vehicle is to be used on smaller roads, so underfloor tipping gear is a natural choice. However, this caused two further problems, a clash with the extra axle and it raised the centre of gravity.
As the vehicle was not going to be used for heavy off-road tipper work, it was possible to use a lower EuroTech 170E18S haulage chassis. A chassis height of just 1,074mm was achieved by fitting 80 series low-profile tyres. This compares with 1,113mm for the tipper chassis, and the underfloor tipping gear adding a further 200mm. Weight is also reduced by about 30kg as the haulage chassis is on parabolic springs instead of the tipper's multi-leaf.
By using Truckfinder the position of the additional Granning lift axle could be decided. By reversing some of the brackets and redirecting a few unions, the tipping gear and axle have been fitted into a neat package. The resulting truck has a GVW of 22.36 tonnes, a 5.95m• body length with only 1.62m overhanging the rear axle. And it doesn't churn up the new road so painstakingly laid by the crew.
On an original wheelbase of 4.82m with a 1.3m rear axle spread, the payload is over 15 tonnes. The body is 5.95m long by lm deep and ends just 1.62m behind the rear axle. With the island's low speed limit, the moneysaving optional six-speed box was more than adequate when coupled to 4.89:1 rear axle. At the prescribed 641nrdh (40mph) the
engine is pulling just over 1,700rpm while retaining a laden restart capability of 1 in 4.
Lowney's need for a "normal" four-wheel tipper, was filled by a standard 170E18K; multi-leaf springs and all. Underfloor tipping gear is again specified to allow a 4.57in body on a 3.69m wheelbase while limiting the rear overhang to 1.35m.
With the tipper chassis and the island's 16.26-tonne weight limit on four-wheelers, the 170E18K's payload comes in at just under 10 tonnes. Running on 12R22.5 tyres and a 5.13 rear duff, this gives laden restart capability of 25% (1-in-4).
Isolated
With more than 250 vehicles and over a dozen fitters, Lowney is keen to get as much training and service back up as possible. The government department runs the biggest truck workshop on the island but being separated from the mainland creates its own difficulties. This can result in Lowney's technicians having to wait for parts and feeling isolated from the technological advances.
Due to the low mileages clocked up on the island most trucks are bought secondhand: under 40 new commercial registrations a year are recorded. This leaves most truck manufacturers having to support vehicles from dealerships on the mainland.
Fortunately, Peoples is well placed to help out on both counts. The regular flights from Liverpool can be used to transport urgent parts to the island if needed. And, to overcome the training problems, the technicians will attend courses at Winsford and Iveco Ford is organising on-site training on the island.
So the next time the TT racers are howling round the Isle of Man they might be thankful that the road surface hasn't been damaged by tyre scrub on fixed-axle 6x4s But they might just have other things on their mind.
John Major, the man who once proclaimed himself "neutral about peas", is also said to be fairly unexcited about the idea of selling off the Post Office. But at least he is considering the prospect—something his predecessor Margaret Thatcher refused to do because of opposition from the Queen.
With the Government's review of the Post Office's future ownership grinding to a close, the Prime Minister appears to be warming to privatisation proposals that would encourage employee participation.
Observers close to the review sum it up: "The Government thinks there is a special place for employees in any Post Office sale and as a result it would really like to do something different" In this case "something different" would mean an improvement on the 2-3% take up of shares by staff during other sales of state-owned industries.
The Government is considering issuing around Clbn worth of shares, up to 51% of the Post Office's value, keeping the remainder in state ownership. Within that framework it is looking at subsidising employee shares to a maximum of £100m, to entice staff to take up to 10% of the floated shares. That figure is expected to be significantly reduced if the Treasury gets its way.
Involvement
Michael Heseltine, President of the Board of Trade, is already sold on the idea of a 51% flotation and backs employee involvement. Within days John Major will weigh up the arguments for and against privatisation and, crucially, whether he can count on support from Tory Mrs for the necessary legislation. Whether or not the Prime Minister decides to include privatisation in November's Queen's Speech it is clear that Post Office Counters will not join its sister companies, Royal Mail and Parcelforce, in the private sector.
As the 170,000 employees of these two companies, including 58,000 drivers, await their fate, staff at transport giant NFC may like to wish them luck. NFC, a management-led employee buyout from the early years of the Thatcher era, is currently going through one of its toughest times since its Stock Market flotation in 1989.
Memories of the euphoria of the 1982 sell-off appear to have faded as the company struggles to field pressure from the City over weak financial results. One of the first tasks of new chairman Sir Christopher Bland will be to persuade the City of NFC's worth. Another will be to find a chief executive to replace Peter Sherlock, who walked out after a boardroom row.
The problems and pressures at NFC, coupled with the company's success at modernising its structure, may give a clue to what lies ahead for the Post Office if it joins the ranks of employee-led privatisations. The City is bound to give the scheme its backing, believing that, at the right level, financial involvement of employees improves motivation. This in turn brings in better financial results and share dividends.
NFC attributes its past successes on the high level of employee ownership: "What are people looking for? Whether an individual or institution it's capital appreciation and dividend income growth. Everyone wants success," it says. But history shows that the privatisation routine includes a dash for instant profit, with many of those subscribing to the rights issue cashing in their cut-price shares the minute trading starts. A Treasury shares subsidy would be bound to exaggerate this trend. Even if large numbers of Post Office workers kept their shares after the first day, it is anyone's guess how many would hold on to them in the medium and long term—or how much influence powerful this would give them.
However, the NFC experience might serve as a clue. At the time of the buy-out some 80% of the company's total value was owned by more than 10,000 employees. The rest was held by the banks backing the purchase. Twelve years on, around 80% of employees still own NFC shares. Many former-employees and their families have held on to their stakes too, but while the number of shareholders has risen, between them they own just 11% of the equity.
This dilution of employee control is partly due to NFC's repeated calls for more funds, in the form of rights issues, and the large take up of those extra shares by City institutions. But it also reflects the need of NFC employees to cash in their shares to pay the bills. According to NFC: "There is a bit of inevitability about it all. The financial climate has been such that people have needed their money and haven't been able to invest in shares either."
That erosion of employee shareholder power has been accompanied by a loss of the "family firm" feeling which was so prevalent in the early buy-out days.
Postal union representatives fear a similar change in culture if the Post Office is floated on the Stock Exchange, even with subsidised employee shares. They predict an end to the public service ethos which has dominated the institution, with the loss of second letter delivery, the free delivery of prescriptions in remote areas and the Post Buses: joint ventures with rural councils where passengers share vehicles with letters.
The Union of Communication workers predicts that the action of shareholders aiming to maximise profits and dividends would exert a "continual pressure to take away the public service ethos so that the Post Office would move away from the culture where it has always found success'.
But NYC's change in culture has also seen a remarkable modernisation of the business from the 1982 collection of haulage companies. It has become a household name that fronts a number international and domestic logistics and removals heavyweights.
No-one would expect a company the size of NFC to survive without change, but the process has not been without its price in the form of company closures. The merger of two of NFC's major components, Exel Logistics and BRS, is testimony to its continuing programme to cut costs.
Shareholders
A privatised Post Office would leave employee shareholders with plenty of free time to count their investments, warns the UCW. It believes that some 30%-50,000 workers—would eventually find themselves out of a job. Some would accuse the UCW of scaremongering, but "efficiency savings" have invariably been part of the privatisation process.
If there a substantial proportion of Post Office employees did buy and retain shares in the company, how easy would it be for the rest of the shareholders—the Government included—to push through massive redundancies? Would employee shareholders co-operate to vote themselves out of a job?
Once again, the NFC experience might indicate how a privatised Post Office would function. NFC claims that all of its shareholders share the desire to maximise profit but the City questions that view. Transport specialists in the Square Mile ask why, when NFC's profit margins are so low, has it failed to shed even more jobs?
One analyst blames employee ownership: "The situation smells. NFC's profit margins are appaling and it's quite clear there is a cost problem„.at the end of the day it feels like the company is shy of redundancies because of the culture of the firm."
But Post Office management, eager for privatisation, says a sell-off would allow a new-look Post Office to emerge, unshackled by Government restrictions. They say postal workers would have new jobs as the company attacked new markets, and, for the first time, obtained finance from banks. They also warn that thousands of jobs will be at risk if the Government fails to sell the business and the Post Office turns into a dinosaur.
The Prime Minister may choose to offer the carrot of employee ownership to persuade the public, postal workers and MPs that privatisation of the Post Office is a good thing. Whether the move would give postal workers more control over their destiny, and how flotation would re-shape the future of the Post Office, is altogether a more complicated issue.
C by Karen Miles