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New night delivery scheme
Page 43
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• "Operation Moondrop", the out-ofhours delivery scheme until recently run by the freight group of the Transport Coordinating Council for London, is not dead but changed.
According to a spokesmanfor the National Economic Development Office, many people who took part in the scheme found that it was not working to their advantage in its original form. This, he suggested, was due mainly to two factors. First, there was a lack of volume needed to make such a scheme successful and, secondly, too much direction was given by the organizers of the scheme, when the impetus should have come from the managers of the participating concerns.
The currently operating scheme is being supported mainly by large multiple store concerns such as Tesco, Waitrose and MacFisheries. This is so, it is thought, because it is more convenient for larger firms to have staff available to cope with late deliveries. But, although there are at present no small independent retailers taking part, it is hoped that they will be attracted by the "do-ityourself" character of the present scheme. Lists of the names and phone numbers of the managers responsible for organizing deliveries in the individual stores, warehouses and depots will be circulated to people in the scheme, and it will then be left to the managers to organize deliveries for themselves.
There is fear that, if road congestion continues to increase at its present rate, some such scheme will eventually be made compulsory either by Whitehall or local councils. Mr. Frank Taylor, of SPD Ltd. and a member of the scheme's Action Group, said at a recent meeting at London's County Hall: "If we can find the answers ourselves, we are likely to find answers that are more suited to industry than if they are forced on us from above."