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Land of the free
Page 98
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Janus comments
TOTAL LACK of supporting evidence will have prevented the interests unfriendly to the lorry from suggesting that the Ministry of Transport has a bias in favour of road transport. The US equivalent, the Department of Transportation, has not been similarly fortunate in escaping the accusation rendered in plain American that it is "primarily trucking-industry oriented".
The allegation comes from a trouble-shooter named Ralph Nader whose assistants are widely and picturesquely known as "raiders". The Washington Post has reported two of them as saying that "the Department works hand-in-hand with the industry and ignores violations, and rebuffs drivers who seek to have safety regulations enforced".
Typical example The US Bureau of Motor Carrier Safety has denied the accusation and has stated that the evidence which is supposed to support it is either false or at best contains gross exaggerations. A typical example from the Nader report which started the controversy was an account of the death of a lorry driver who had been on the road for an excessive number of hours. On investigation it was found that the driver was still alive.
As in Britain the opponents of road transport in the US are quick to abandon facts and figures which are no longer credible, and look for others. The Nader organization, having withdrawn its dubious report on the grounds that it was prepared hastily to meet a request from a Member of Congress, is now busily assembling material for a much larger report.
The procedure adopted may make strange reading in Britain. Drivers have been asked questions which can only be described as loaded. The following examples show clearly what response it is hoped to obtain: "How often are you expected to (and do) falsify your logs each month? Are you asked to record lunch stops as off-duty? How often have you fallen asleep on the road? Do you take pep pills to stay awake? Do you use bennies? How many fellow drivers use them? Do you drink alcohol regularly to relax?"
Questions such as these might tempt the driver to incriminate other drivers and his employer. The catechsim continues: "How many times has your company suspended you for refusal to drive because of sickness, hazardous conditions? Are you forced to exceed the speed limits in order to make runs in expected times?"
Indications are that Ralph Nader is not conducting his inquiries out of a sense of public duty. As with similar exercises in the past there seem to be close links with the railways and, particularly, with the American Automobile Association. The evidence will be used to oppose legislation increasing vehicle weights and sizes.
Here again there is a parallel with what is happening in Britain. Proposed changes are being used as an opportunity not merely to resist them but to attack road transport in general.
While there is no proof of bias by the American DoT, Government officials are not afraid to defend road transport in public. Mr. F. C. Turner, Federal Highway Administrator, gave the American Association of State Highway Officials a long list of the myths that are being given currency by "anti-highway groups" and supplied some forceful answers to them.
Here is a sample. "One of the biggest and most often repeated myths," said Mr. Turner, "is that mass transit can substitute effectively for highway transportation in an either-or, of local choice basis. In some larger cities, it can surely augment highway transportation of people but what about the movement of goods, none of which can be moved by a rail line? To talk about rail transit as a single, simple panacea for all the nation's transportation problems in every urban area simply does not jibe with reality.
"The clothes we wear, the food we eat, the newspapers we read, the mail we receive, are all dependent on highway transportation and even more so within urban areas than the inter-city links."
Mr. Turner was equally severe on the legend of a highway lobby influencing the authorities to build more and more roads. The highway lobby, he said, was made up of the owners of 105m motor vehicles plus 200m more people basically dependent on motor vehicles. In the light of this self-evident statement it is stranger than ever that the organizations representing motorists in the US play so prominent a part in the battle against the lorry.
It is not only in the road /rail war that the British operator would notice differences in the US. While the British carriers' licensing system is in process of dissolution the complications continue to build up in the American system and particularly in the legislation controlling rates.
Destructive competition Unlike our own dear Prices and Incomes Board the 'US Interstate Commerce Commission prescribes minimum rates. The intention is to prevent destructive rate competition especially between road and rail. Whatever they may have thought about it in the early days the operators have learned to love their shackles in the same way as British hauliers developed an affection for the licensing restrictions which kept other operators at arm's length.
The DoT—which has been a Government Department for only a few years—has begun to test some of its power to make changes. It has even suggested that the railways might be allowed to charge rates below the properly distributed costs. To road operators this is near blasphemy. An article in one of the US road transport journals protests that "some of the DoT top policy people are seeking the course of action long advocated by the railroads—a lessening of the power of the ICC to regulate competition".
Rates laid down Operators attribute this wayward behaviour by the DoT to the omission when it was formed of a highway transport advocate who would balance the Federal Railroad Administration. Evidently the DoT has few friends when it is accused on one side of being "primarily trucking-industry oriented" and on the other of supporting the railways.
Maximum as well as minimum rates are laid down by the ICC. This may give rise to problems of a different kind. Traders with small consignments to be carried complain of discrimination by hauliers, of excessive rates and in some cases of refusal to accept the goods. The number of complaints has risen from 3,000 in 1965 to over 8,000 last year and the total for 1969 is expected to be even higher.
For the carrier a defence against the complaint may be difficult. It is stated on his licence or certificate that he must "render reasonably continuous and adequate service to the public" and that "failure to do so shall constitute sufficient grounds for suspension, change or revocation".
His reasons for refusing traffic are said to be its physical characteristics, its volume, or the inconvenient collection or delivery points. He may also be unable to make satisfactory arrangements with other carriers. The ICC has gone further and attacked the increasing tendency of hauliers to cancel "through-route and joint rate agreements" and to refuse to take part in new arrangements.
Transplanted across the Atlantic the phrases have a strangely ironical echo. Apparently in the US "joint rate agreements" are to be commended and the operator in the land of the free who stands aloof from them also stands condemned. In Britain they might well be considered as a suitable subject for consideration by the Prices and Incomes Board.
What would the Board or the Ministry have to say on this comment on the situation by a contributor to the New York Journal of Commerce? "Those carriers," he writes, "which continue their fierce insistence on absolute independence and freedom from even minimal regulation may well do so at the expense of full participation in this nation's commerce."
The situation is different in each country so that the words do not mean the same. Operators in Britain may still feel that they are getting the worst of the old world and of the new in that they are discouraged from fixing standard rates among themselves but also have inflicted on them guidlines that are presumably designed to keep rates down to the lowest level