Let's examine these rates for tippers
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HE TOTAL package of hauage earnings, rates and the 'mount of work done, must )e examined and put to ights, Bryan Jones, of Tarnac Roadstone (Southern) ..td, told the convention. He mid tribute to the work done 3 y the tipper groups and (erry Spencer.
Britain needs a haulage inlustry which is able to provide 3roducers with suitable /ehicles, often at short notice. If :hey are to be available then :here must be an adequate .eturn on the haulier's investTient, said Mr Jones.
"Do tipper operators offer :he right service?'" This was the :itte of his paper and his answer s both yes and no.
Looking at the background, said, 1973 was the peak year or the aggregates and blacktop Industries with production amounting to 324m tonnes. Last year's figure was more like 240m; by 1982 this is expected to be 258m. In other words there is likely to be an increase over the next four to five years of something like 71/2 per cent of present tonnages.
In the coated roadstone market, the fall-off since 1973 is even more disconcerting, he said. Whereas in 1973 some 33m tonnes of coated material were produced, 1977's figures are expected to show only 22m tonnes.
The prophets, never a particularly cheerful crowd, seem to be agreed that the demands on the industry have now bottomed out, and we can now look forward to an upward movement, however slight.
What he does find worrying, he continued, is that haulage availability has certainly followed the same curve as the demand for material, but has diminished at a faster rate and to a greater degree. This in his view is demonstrated by the simple fact that finding the haulage to move today's reduced tonnages is just as much a problem as it was in 1973. Once the demand picks up, be it ever so slightly, there will be a very serious problem in providing vehicles to move the materials called for.
A producer looking at transport, he said he wants it to be economical. In the case of dry material particularly, the haulage element in a delivered price can be well over 50 per cent of
the total. In a market where supply exceeds demand and competition is fierce, he must sell on quality and service.
For a producer to invest money in transport absorbs capital; he wants to rely, therefore, to the maximum degree possible, on hiring vehicles from the haulage industry. Gone are the days when a company operated large fleets of its own vehicles simply because it thought it was the right thing to do.
The justification for putting trucks on the road, whether they be replacements or additions, has to be examined very carefully and against very specific criteria, he argued. The requirements for company vehicles are dictated by the number which we must have, in addition to the hired fleet, to meet our requirements. The -ownedfleet is regarded as augmenting the hired fleet rather than the reverse.
Another consideration is the advertising value of one's own vehicle — showing the flag. Another consideration is that one can be far more alive to — and responsive to — movements in transport costs if one is directly and financially involved in vehicle operation. And the effect of efficiency of utilisation on transport costs is much more easily monitored if one has actual experience with one's own vehicles.
So the message which I want to get across today is that transportation in the aggregates and blacktop industry is essentially a matter of partnership between the producer and the hire and reward haulier, said Mr Jones.
On dry materials, we must do all we can to contain haulage cost — and in our parlance that means haulage rates — and seek to ensure that coated traffic ceases to be subsidised by dry, he said. He could not help feeling, that, largely due to Kerry's work, both industries are both very much aware of the disparity between the true cost of hauling dry stone and hauling coated material and of the need to reflect that in the respective haulage payments.
Turning to vehicle types, he said that, except in a minority of 'cases, insulation is a must. The materials called for today are very sophisticated, and those for tomorrow are more so. Ternperature is critical. And dry material must be sheeted if there is the slightest risk at all of material falling, blowing or in any other way coming off thevehicle.
Every vehicle should be capable of discharging cleanly and without spillage — and without smashing the tailboard — into any of the paving machines currently in use today.
A simple rule of thumb is that the back of the body should be some 30in behind the point at which the paver rollers pick up on the vehicle, whether it be on the tyres, the spring hangers, the push bar or whatever, he said. At maximum angle of tip, there should be 1ft 3in clearance from the lowest point of the tipped body to the floor. Unless it is possible to throw the tailboard right over — and in so doing there is a real danger when it is swung back down — a split tail-gate of some sort or other is essential.
Four-wheelers? S i xwheelers? Eight-wheelers? Artics even? His view, he said, is that the six-wheeler, with its 16-ton plus payload, is the optimum load size and has the greatest degree of flexibility. But he would put in a strong plea for the four-wheeler, so often called
for on deliveries where access is difficult. It might seem contradictory for him to encourage his haulier friends to invest in these particular machines when the producers alongside whose vehicles they work have conspicuously weeded them out of their own-account fleets.
His reason for feeling that these particular vehicles can best be provided by the hire and reward man is that he believes he has a greater degree of flexibility in working for various people and on various commodities than has the ownaccount operator.
When a producer puts another vehicle on the road, it is in nine cases out of 10 because he could not get his product moved in any other way, concluded Mr Jones. In other words, he could not get service from the tipper operators.
DISCUSSION
OPERATORS were ready to take issue with Tarmac Roadstone's Brian Jones when discussion opened on his paper.
He had said that he believed larger operators would continue to use hire fleets to avoid high levels of capital investment in their own vehicles.
But his audience made it clear to Mr Jones that if the, large quarry companies were going to pass the responsibility for capital investment back to the operators it should be accompanied by some form of financial commitment.
And they thought that this commitment should take the form of guarantees.
R. S. Boyce (North Western area) commented "You are asking fbr special yehicles but continued overleaf