'Don't blame exporters for dock delays'
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ICH CA Conference report by John Darker
• Many searching questions were raised at Southampton last week at the conference on "Expediting Exports" arranged by the International Cargo Handling Co-ordination Association, Although it was less well attended than last year's Birmingham con ference, the quality of the papers presented was excellent. Air freight was represented for the first time in the person of Mr. J. R.
Jones, cargo manager (UK) British Overseas Airways Corporation whose paper paid tribute to the value of the specialist road services provided by the air forwarding agents.
With road haulage responsible for more than 80 per cent of inland freight move ments it was inevitable that many topics of direct interest to road transport operators would be dealt with and it is regrettable that so few representatives from the industry were present.
Subjects aired included: the inadequacy of road access to sea and airports; the effect of the Transport Bill on investment pro grammes of road hauliers; the Bill's effect on the costs of transport operations; the impact of the quantity licensing proposals on goods movement to the ports; labour relations problems in transport and especially in ports; the need for improved communications between transport providers and their customers; and the possible effects of the Channel Tunnel.
On this last point, Mr. D. O'Neill, undersecretary, ports, shipping and defence at the Ministry of Transport, confessed that he was "a profound misbeliever in the Tunnel —though that is not the official view".
Mr. R. L. J. Wills, vice-president of the British Export Houses Association, was critical of some aspects of port control of lorry traffic in his paper: "Problems of the future from the exporter's viewpoint". After stressing that the attainment of greater reliability in export deliveries was largely a matter of industrial relations and effective management control he went on: "We are always told what an intractable problem it is to secure some sort of co-ordinated flow of goods to the docks. The Rochdale Committee ... were told this and particularly at moments of crisis exporters are told how wicked they are to send their lorries down to the docks all at the same time.
"There is almost a suggestion that exporters conspire to make life more difficult than it need be for shipowners and port authorities. This is arrant nonsense. Exporters are the one group of men who can exercise no collective control whatsoever over the movement of goods into the docks; all we can do is to seek desperately for ways of minimizing the delays and escalating costs we have to bear as a result of recurring crises in our major ports."
Mr. Wills pointed out that half the total export tonnage of the UK was provided by 50 firms, and that only-150 firms accounted for as much as 60 per cent of the total. "It surely ought not to be impossible, as a result of proper consultation, to plan deliveries to the docks of such a small number of firms so that bunching towards the end of a vessel's loading period is avoided." The speaker stressed that if the big "base load" of exports were co-ordinated the "unheralded and un-booked" forwardings of smaller exporters would matter less.
After criticizing the quantity licensing provisions of the Transport Bill, Mr. Wills said he feared that flexibility to deal with the urgent and unexpected, or to adapt quickly to changes in the nature, size, packaging and destination of exported products would disappear. Many export journeys to docks were in excess of 100 miles so that a good deal of vital export traffic would be "caught" by these new provisions.
He ended by expressing the fears of many exporters that the monopoly powers of container consortia might be abused. This was not, as Sir Andrew Crichton had said, "based more on emotions than on economic fact". Users' fears of monopoly power were very real whether they were dealing with shipowners or port authorities.
Mr. S. A. Finals reviewed the progress of the massive investment in port facilities in his paper: "Recent developments at United Kingdom ports". He noted that British Railways were generally conscious of the ports as focal areas for concentrated traffic flows and had planned Freightliner depots accordingly. But "on the road side . .. the construction of modern facilities have so far fallen behind the needs of the ports. Some 83 per cent of freight traffic is now carried by road transport and while the further development of Freightliners may cause some small reduction in the percentage figure the total volume of road traffic is unlikely to decrease materially. It seems clear that future road plans must consider more closely the needs of the ports if the present congestion is to be kept below levels where conditions in the landside approaches will become chaotic."
One of the points made by Mr. Philip Shirley, in a paper describing the work of the Economic Development Committee for the Movement of Exports, was that transport users, and particularly exporters, should make the best possible use of available transport facilities. It was simply no use for an exporter to wait for the customer or agent to come and collect; he must interest himself in the best method of delivery, entrusting the detail where appropriate to an alert forwarding agent.
Mr. Shirley revealed that for the majority of exports, especially to Europe, "transport time is shorter and often considerably shorter than order-to-dispatch time. Exporting firms, large and small, should examine very carefully their arrangements for co-ordinating their order, production, stockholding and dispatch departments. . . . Speed and cost are relatively easy to optimize; reliability requires eternal vigilance."
At a Brains Trust session, Mr. T. G. Gibb, formerly of British Road Services but now general manager of BR's Freightliner division told a questioner who alleged it was sometimes necessary to wait three or four weeks for a container that as a general statement this was not accurate. In isolated instances there could be delay in providing special types of container. "The stock of BR containers is vastly in excess of the demand and the ability of Freightliner trains to carry them at any one time." Unless good usage was obtained ownership of containers did not pay off.
To a questioner who felt that the Transport Bill frustrated investment in vehicles and premises, Mr. Gibb said that quality licensing would increase the costs of road hauliers who had neglected vehicle maintenance "but this should happen anyway". He did not think the driving hours reduction would be a significant problem in road haulage.
There was much misconceived thinking on the effects of quantity licensing. Road haulage had been severely licensed since 1933 and the mere substitution of one form for another was not in his view a danger. The quantity licensing provisions would not prevent road movement of goods to the docks. The Bill had not frustrated road haulage vehicle development as anyone could judge who visited the Commercial Motor Show. As regards access roads to docks he was more concerned with what happened to vehicles inside the dock gates, though better roads were obviously needed.