Regional Smalls Companies Needed
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says C. S. Dunbar,
(Founder and Chairman, 1937-44, National Conference of Express Carriers) rHE.. announcement, that the British Transport Commission intend to dispose of all their parcels and smalls vehicles is astonishing, especially. when Is remembered that the basis on which these services ye been built up is the Carter Paterson-Pickford ganization which the railways bought jointly 20 years D. They did this as a first step towards the co-ordina7n of road and rail and thik was the aim also of the T.C. as their successors.
Sir Reginald Wilson, in his paper to the Institute of ansport Congress in Glasgow, referred in some detail Smalls. He made it clear that had the B.T.C. been owed to pursue their planned policy without the anges introduced by the 1953 Act, the time would ye come when an integrated service would have been len for passenger-train parcels, merchandise-train falls and road service parcels and smalls. There would esumably,. have been a single collection and delivery rvice in most places, with suitable trunk hauls rformed by rail instead of by road.
Sir Reginald said that the annual value of the traffic volved was about £40m. at present handled by the ilway services and lm. by British Road Services. e considered that, even if the railways were used for e trunk hauls and depots were hired wherever possible, private operator seeking to provide a nation-wide rvice for all these smalls would need a capital of £30m.
End of Comprehensive Service?
The decision that B.R.S. shall eventually handle only ilk loads produced several interesting and difficult .oblems. In the first place, it would seem to mean e abandonment of any attempt by the B.T.C. to provide comprehensive service for all classes of traffic. But )es it, in fact? May it not be that the intention is to welop the railway collection and delivery services and y means of the already established railheads to afford complete coverage of the country, offering through ttes with which no private carrier could compete?
If the smalls services are to be sold, on what principle ill they be disposed of? Generally speaking, it will not a possible to dispose of the vehicles without the depots :id in many instances more than one depot will have to sold with each group of vehicles, because a depot is ecessary at each end of a trunk route.
It is true that a number of express carriers (some of iem fairly substantial concerns) escaped nationalization nd there may be cases where such concerns could sefully add a few vehicles or could, perhaps, do with new depot, but such instances will be rare.
It seems inevitable that the smalls section of B.R.S. hould be sold in units which can be worked by their ew owners without any interruption of service to ustomers. It is essential in a smalls undertaking to .perate the advertised services on the advertised days, rrespective of the volume of traffic offering, and if erious interruptions to the services occur, the goodwill of the business goes. But the continuance af this service o customers, under present conditions, depends on the 'ontinuance of a complete set-up for the handling of raffle, not only within the unit itself, but also through nterchange.
The handling of smalls entails high terminal costs in he provision of depots and staffs to which bulk-load operators are not subject. It seems unlikely, therefore, that there will be any great demand for the smalls fleet unless goodwill goes with it. This cannot be conveyed unless the business passes over without interruption.
But, supposing this could be arranged, the prospective purchaser must still face the fact that with present-day costs it is practically impossible to run smalls services profitably without handling bulk traffic as well. Again, there will be no great rush for the smalls vehicles unless this problem can be solved.
For these practical reasons we are faced with the dilemma of having to square the decision to sell the B.R.S. smalls services with the inescapable conclusion that a quasi-monopoly is needed to take their place -unless either the services are to collapse completely or the traffic is to be swept into the railway orbit and out of private hands altogether.
Balanced Units If the decision to sell the parcels vehicles is adhered to, the only possible method would seem to be by first making some important changes within the. B.R.S. organization. Consideration should be given to the formation of a number of territorial companies, which would take over the parcels vehicles and depots in their areas. To these should be added a sufficient number of general-purpose vehicles to form balanced units. The companies would be incorporated and their shares sold.
London presents arspecial problem, partly because of the size of the undertaking needed to give a complete coverage and partly because such an undertaking will have to be at the service of all provincial undertakings. Before nationalization, every haulier, outside the railway-associated companies, running into London maintained a separate depot, but most of these small places have been closed and the traffic concentrated in the half-dozen or so large depots taken over from the big groups. To re-open most of the former independent depots would probably be impossible.
Could London Service Pay?
It is well known that Carter Paterson's London services were losing money before the war and it is at least problematical if, with the great growth of C-licence operation, a purely London service could be made to pay today. Even if the finance could be found to buy the C.P. Loridon undertaking, it would be an ill-advised purchase unless provincial connections went with it. Nor would it be wise to split the London area into a number of independent units. A provincial carrier will not want his vehicles running round to half-a-dozen different depots to off-load smalls.
The London parcels organization, as it exists today, should be incorporated as a whole into a company and the share capital should be so arranged that all the provincial smalls companies likely to have trunk services working into London should be able to become shareholders in it. C.P. (London), Ltd., would become to the provincial smalls operators what London Coastal Coaches, Ltd., is to the provincial bus operators.
It might be useful if a substantial block of shares in this company were retained by the B.T.C. and opportunities taken whenever possible of using it for the collection and delivery of railway smalls.