Rhapsody in Blue
Page 69
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AFTER murdering Julius Caesar, the conspirators bickered among themselves, and forgot whatever plans they may have had for improving on his political system. There is a danger that hauliers may fall into the same error. They are disposed to ignore the very real threat that the system they have overthrown may revive. They do not quarrel openly with each other, but, at a time when many perils confront them, they seem over-scrupulous about defining their exact inter-relation ships.
Hauliers with a leaning towards pessimism can find plenty to be gloomy about. Whether the new drive by the railways will be effective remains to be seen, but
they are sparing no efforts to tell the public what they•are doing. At each step forward they raise a shout.
The latest occasion was the commencement of the merchandise charges scheme on July 1, heralded by the distribution to traders all over the country of a special explanatory booklet.
Other shots in the railway locker are the modernization programme and the plan for decentralization: Each has had, and no doubt will continue to have, its accompanying barrage of leaflets. Simultaneously, British Road Services are calling their wares, and the discouragement of hauliers is completed by the persistence in the Labour party of a policy for further State ownership which takes almost for granted, as-the first stage, the renationalization of the steel industry and of road haulage.
Feelings of Gloom
It only needs the ninth report of the British Transport Commission to show that any feeling of gloom among hauliers is misconceived. Their competitors are not doing at all well, in spite of their apparent confidence, whilst most hauliers seem to be making a fair living. Where they have failed, perhaps, is in presenting themselves properly to the public. The T.C., by means of publicity, have drawn attention to characteristics that trade and industry have, on the whole, not bothered a great deal about in the past, but now expect to find in all providers of transport Mistakenly, the hauliers have relied on old friendships and sympathies, and have not noticed that their customers have cespondecl, to some degree forcibly, to the Commission's new approach.
A united road haulage industry has always had its attractions. It has promised the trader a service not likely to vary, greatly, whatever his requirements. He has preferred to hand over his traffic and feel that he can forget about it. This is the kind of service that, in their advertising, B.R.S., who know their market, promise to supply. It is the kind of service that hauliers have been accustomed to give.
In the past., little emphasis was needed. A uniform minimum standard was taken for granted. Concentration by B.R.S. on this particular point has made the customer see its value. His heightened awareness has coincided with a period when there is an unusually large number of people offering to provide road transport without being properly equipped to do so. This state of affairs finds its cause in the inevitable confusion that followed disposal, and that is gradually clearing.
One unfortunate experience, possibly involving the
loss of a consignment, is enough to convince a trader that he can place reliance only on the hauliers he knows. Beyond that fairly narrow circle, there may, he admits, be many thousands of reputable operators, but he has no way of telling them from the comparatively few who are inefficient, or even dishonest. His consequent impatience with the road haulage industry in general is sharpened by the thought, put into his mind almost daily through publicity of various kinds, that B.R.S. can at least he relied upon to give a uniform service, whatever its intrinsic quality.
From this frame of mind is created the situation deplored a few weeks ago by a number of hauliers at the traffic managers' conference of Associated Road Transport Contractors, Ltd. They gave evidence of traders who refused to allow their goods to be subcontracted. Government departments, responsible for handing over considerable tonnages of traffic, were adopting practically the same attitude by insisting on the completion of questionnaires asking for the qualifications of sub-contractors.
B.R.S. Vehicles The customer's justification is that he hires the hauliers he needs, and should not be fobbed off with substitutes. If the hauliers have to sub-contract, it is argued,. they must have more traffic than they can handle, and the customer would be well advised to .take
his business elsewhere. The traffic managers pointed out, however, that, should the same customer also make use of "I.R.S., vehicles were accepted from an even More remote base than that of sub-contractors offered by hauliers. The simple explanation, it was suggested, was that the B.R.S. vehicles were " all the same colour."
A trader with a dislike for sub-contracting may be depriving himself of certain advantages, but the hauliers suffer most in the end. They cannot expand. their businesses. In so far as they are sub-contractors themselves, their vehicles will more often than not return home emply. The co-operation that organizations such as Artco were formed to foster will become impossible, and the whole industry will fall apart into thousands of separate units.
The temptation, not altogether resisted . by Artco's traffic managers, is to blame the customer. But this is surely one of the cases where it is better to assume that the customer is always right. The reference to B.R.S. provides the clue. The nationalized organization has an easier task than hauliers to persuade trade and industry that it is united. However simple the task, B.R.S. have performed it extremely well. By comparison, independent hauliers have made scarcely any effort at all to reveal to the public the close degree of co-operation and interworking that undoubtedly exists.
The process of settling down after disposal should by now have ended. Hauliers have established innumerable relationships among themselves. If they find the customer suspicious, they must take a leaf out of the B.R.S. book, not so much by painting all their vehicles the same colour, as by ensuring that adequate public attention is paid to the essential unity by means of which reputable operators all over the country can add their individual quota to a united service.