DAY OF THE CLEARING HOUSE
Page 47
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
"SOMETIMES one gets the impression", said Maggie's brother, Cromwell, "that Mrs. Castle and her counsellors deliberately set out to plan what they can do next to baffle the unfortunate road transport industry. As if there were not enough problems with plating, vehicle testing, drivers' hours and so on, she now has to make public her ideas on licensing."
"They could be regarded as a challenge to the ingenuity of operators," I said. "I can easily imagine that your friend Bloggs is already making arrangements for all his vehicles to weigh 4 tons 19 cwt and for all his depots to be exactly 99 miles apart."
"That sort of thing is dated," said Cromwell. "Trad rather than mod, as we used to say. Bloggs is more likely to be buying for his staff all the rail uniforms he can lay hands on before Carnaby Street wakes up to what is happening. Then he would be able to change his business title to Bloggs the Railway Operator and qualify as an objector to other people's applications.
"There may still be some operators oldfashioned enough to be thinking about modifying their vehicles," I said. "They could be premature, of course. Before she brings in her Bill Mrs. Castle may decide that 5 tons unladen weight is not the right dividing line between what does and does not interest the railways. The RHA has already suggested that it might be better to classify vehicles according to payload or plated weight."
"That I should like to see," said Cromwell. "We should then have operators and manufacturers on the one side trying to keep the plated weight down and the Ministry experts on the other side, perhaps with the support of the railways, trying to put it up. The general public will believe that the whole industry has either gone off its head or is standing on it."
"Many operators are feeling that way already," I said, "now they have had the opportunity to study Mrs. Castle's proposals in detail. They might agree with her that road safety is one valid objective of a licensing system but certainly not that the other is to encourage the railways to do what at one time they accused hauliers of doing—cream off the traffic."
"Bloggs maintains that there is at least one other valid objective," said Cromwell, "which is to make a good living for him. He is planning to achieve the objective in the only way he thinks possible."
"I cannot imagine what that is," I said, "unless he is taking up a post on the Road Transport Industry Training Board or applying to run the vehicle testing scheme."
"Nothing in the least like that," said Cromwell. -Road transport is in his blood, he says, and he is determined to stick by the industry through thick and thin."
"If he is not planning to convert his vehicles or facilities," I said, "what other ideas has he got?"
"For one thing he intends to give up running vehicles," said Cromwell. "When anybody with a clean face and oily hands and a little bit put by in the post office can be given a licence, he maintains, that is not for him. He is an individualist. In addition to which it looks like being even more easy to lose a licence than to get one."
"So Bloggs will dispense with a licence," I said. "He will still need lorries unless he is proposing to get a fleet of bicycles."
"In his opinion the role of the operator is played out," said Cromwell. "He regards it as a happy thought on the part of the RHA to hint to the Minister that, although it might be a good idea to screen applicants for a licence, there would be no applicants at all unless she made the prospect more enticing. Not the man with the vehicles but the man with the traffic will be supreme, according to Bloggs. Mrs. Castle's appointed day will be the day of the clearing house."
"There is nothing particularly novel about that," I said. "Plenty of good clearing houses are operating already."
"Bloggs makes no claim to originality," said Cromwell. "He is just being what he calls realistic. He would go further than you and say that at the moment nearly all hauliers are clearing houses—or sub-contract traffic which comes to the same thing. But the scope will suddenly widen under the new scheme. All at once there will be half a million or more traders with the right to carry for anybody and no idea where to get the traffic. Bloggs will get it for them."
"He might be on a good thing," I said. "As it would be a part-time occupation for the traders they would not grumble nearly as much as the hauliers about the low rates and the high commission which I am sure he has in mind."
"It is not the fault of Bloggs if rates go down,said Cromwell. "All he wants to do is to keep the goods moving and so help Mrs. Castle and the Licensing Authorities who will have enough to do as it is, especially
at first."
"Certainly", I said, "it is hard to see how they are to sift the applications properly especially in the early stages: or where they are ever to find enough people to supervise examinations and mark papers, in addition to all the extra vehicle examiners and testers, records officers and so on."
"The cost will be staggering," said Cromwell. "That is why on principle Bloggs will not himself apply for a licence—even if there was the slightest chance he would get one in view of what the Licensing Authority said about him the other day. He sees no point in meeting any of the costs personally just to keep moving the traffic which the railways do not want."
"Some of the road transport unions think the Minister is offering the railways all that they could possibly ask as a reward to the NUR for doing what everybody else said they ought to do," I said. "Her plan may ultimately mean hauliers will have no traffic for the Freightliner terminals they are now free to use."
"Mrs. Castle spared no pains to make her case," said Cromwell. "You have quoted her remark that road safety is one of two valid objectives of a licensing system. Not so long ago she published a White Paper on this very subject and I can remember no reference to licensing in it."
"Her idea on that occasion," I said, "was to judge a road safety proposal by comparing its cost with the number of accidents it was likely to prevent."
"And she was talking about accidents in general," said Cromwell. "But when it comes to licensing she refers only to road deaths and deplores the fact that there are 40 per cent. more per vehicle mile for lorries over 30 cwt than for those below."
"If Mrs. Castle had included serious accidents," I said, "the position would have been reversed."
"In view of the fact that she raised the subject," said Cromwell, "she might have continued with a comparison between the cost of all these vehicle improvements, inspections, GV9s and the rest and the reduction in accidents which is expected to result. The answer might have been disappointing."