ded image: ho's to blame?
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APTIVE audience of hauliers II endure a good deal of iting. Any one of the various
perts invited to address them .ill agree that he is given a good feel of licence to deprecate their ii-oortcomings. Their conditioning over the years to icademic jargon from the °strum has schooled them not b answer back.
But there are times when the ecturer becomes a little too ierce and begins to sense a lostile response. In such ircumstances, he has found rom experience a guaranteed nethod of deflecting the anger vithout appearing to change his iwn attacking stance.
All he need do is reproach his udience for taking no action to -nprove its industry's public -nage. Hauliers will not resent
criticism. They will even ielcome it.
They accept withOut question let their image is bad. But the ldividual operator does not elate the accusation to himself. he fault lies elsewhere, robably — he would say ertainly — with his association. To make himself completely acure, the speaker will usually oint in this direction. His udience, he will assert or imply, , in this respect poorly served y the body which is supposed ) defend it.
Even when the audience is flatively docile, an attack on the oad Haulage Association or the -eight Transport Association, r both, will bring a favourable !sponse. It encourages the
speaker to go further. He can be as bold as he likes.
He can even contradict himself, or appear to do so, without anybody noticing.
Transport solicitor Jonathan Lawton brought off this feat at the RHA tipper convention (CM June 6,1981). The RHA, he had suggested, should not be paying him a fee. It should be spending the money elsewhere "on improving its public image".
There was applause and widespread agreement from the members. Mr Lawton was expressing their long-held and deeply felt convictions. RHA chairman Ken Rogers was almost the only dissenter.
Mr Lawton had made his point in the context of the frequent convictions for axle overloading where the operator was not entitled to make a plea of "due diligence".
Mr Rogers said that he had personally raised the issue with Transport Secretary Norman Fowler and with individual magistrates, and would be meeting the Magistrates' Association this month.
None of this activity was likely to bring results, Mr Lawton replied. Politicians seeking to meet the RHA's wishes on "due diligence" would be "stoned by the public". The RHA must go "direct to the man in the street".
"What you have to do is sell your image to the public in the same way that any product is sold," he concluded.
Once the image had been introduced as a talisman to solve all problems, the contradictory advice was also accepted without question.
Nobody wondered whether the man in the street who was to be the subject of a direct approach was also a member of the public who would throw brickbats at the Minister if he dared to mention the words "due diligence".
Once the ambiguity is established, the situation looks the opposite to that described by Mr Lawton. One would expect a more favourable response to a proposal from a Minister than to the same proposal from an obviously vested interest.
Appeals so often made to the image are a substitute for proper consideration of the relationship between the road transport industry and the public. Insofar as the concept of the image has meaning, it can be ascribed to the heavy lorry.
If a totally inoffensive substitute for the vehicle could be discovered, the problem of the image would disappear.
What puzzles operators is the extent to which the problem has grown with the passage of time. They can remember when public resentment was aroused only occasionally and was usually quickly allayed.
Their natural inclination is to blame the increasing public hostility on the flourishing antiroad lobby, which has almost become an industry on its own account. They believe the old relationship with the public would be restored if the agitators would cease their protests.
It is an enticing belief. Much of the support for the anti-road lobby comes from people or organisations with their own interests to promote, such as more use of rail and inland waterways and less use of concrete. But the lobby would not have reached its present pitch without a corresponding growth in general dislike for lorries. There are more of them than 20 or 30 years ago, and changes in the industrial pattern have brought more and more of them to districts where they were once rare visitors. There is also much greater competition for road space, mainly from motorists.
Naturally, operators must continue to reply to criticism. It is as important as ever to explain the irreplaceable advantages of road transport, and to publicise the support of the industry for measures designed to reduce annoyance to the public.
The various campaigns that have been undertaken should not be discontinued because they cannot bring total success.
It is futile, however, to perpetuate the myth that the anti-road lobby had besmirched something described as the image, and that the neglected task of hauliers — or of their associations — is to clean it up and burnish it until it looks like new.
The lobby has had most of its work done for it. All it need do is to swim with the tide and make a few extra splashes.
It is not possible, as Mr Lawton and others are urging, to appeal over the heads of the politicians and environmentalists to an unspecified body of opinion prepared to accept the lorry on the industry's own terms.
The golden age will not return. If ever there was a land of lost content, if ever the public had a love affair with the lorry, it was over long ago.