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HINTS FOR HAULIERS.

5th October 1920, Page 47
5th October 1920
Page 47
Page 47, 5th October 1920 — HINTS FOR HAULIERS.
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Ark Occasional Chat on Subjects and Problems of Interest to Those Who are Engaged, or About to be Engaged, in Running Commercial Vehicles for a Living.

I T IS THE WISH of the Editor that .I should . temporarily digress from the new series of articles which I commenced last week, in the course of which it is my intention to review, in the light of receat alterations in fuel prices andwages, ' the current Costs of running and maintaining a haulier's motor lorry. I-understand that, in the issue which will be graced by this contribution, there is to be devoted a considerable .amount of space (at least, more than that usually allotted to the subject), to a discussion (..f. .'matters of interest to farmers, chiefly on account of. the tractor trials which are taking.place at Lincoln. It is suggested, in order that my own weekly notes should be in keeping with that particular interest of the issue, I should deal with my own familiar subject particularly from the point of view of the haulier who

. has his being in agricultural districts.' •

Such a man has, clearly, certain handicaps to face in carrying on his busineas, -as coinpared with his confrere:who lives and works in the middle of a town or an industrial district. In the first place, his clients are fewer and are situated at considerable distances apart. They, therefore, involve him in a rather large amount . of "dead mileage," as those miles are called which the owner has to spend in travelling from place to place when making his way from one client to another. Means of communication, apart from personal calls, are net good, and the work which offers is aomewhat irregular. a

The Farmer Not Easy to Convince.

Moreover, the' farmer has of dourae, certain means of trahsport alWays•ayailable and, although they may not be so efficientor so rapid as that of the lorry which is offered to him, he will natuially choose to make use of his own horses, or tractor, even, at some slight inc?aivenience or loss of time, rather than actually spend money on a Service which, may be better adapted to his needs. It needs a lot of proof of efficiency in . order to demonstrate that it-Is not better to employ a means actually at hand, and For which there is no immediate or apparent need-of payment, than to take advantage of services for which it is clear that an actual payment will have to be made. The difficulty is a psychological one, and willonly be • overcome by the joint efforts Of the individual haulier , and time.

At the same time, the country haulier is advantageously placed in other ways. He haa less rent to pay, runs less risk of accident and, generally, has less difficult road surfaces to traverse, although, in sonic eases, the latter may be hardly so true.

The variety of loads, too, is somewhat of a handicap. and a deterrent, for while, fox example' there is sure to be plenty of _work in a cattle and 'sheep7: breeding district in carrying small numbers of stock to and from the various markets, the difficulty is that all the farmers in any one disaxict want their loads: to be carried on the same day,,at the same time, and to the same market. As, generally, the work is sueh that it necessitates the haulier taking the load up to market in the morning, and -frequently -waiting to bring back another at night; it will be realized that the fixing of a tariff which will meet such condition.s is no easy :matter. And, in fact, experience has shown that it is just in this particular department of his business that the country haulier is at. fault. He does not know what to charge. Naturally, he wishes to set as much as he reasonably can for his service which he offers. He does not,: on the one hand,

want to kill the buainess by seeming too greedy, nor, on the other hand, can -be afford.to carry on for long at low rates which may be involving him in a loss for every mile he travels. Tor although it is perfectly true that, with the motor wagon, the greater the useful mileage that can be run in the course of a working day the less is the cost. of running the vehicle per mile and the lower can be the charges made for its hire, it is still not a fact that it can be run on the system advocated by the old apple woman, who sold apples for a halfpenny, for which, as she declared, she herself paid three farthings, and when questioned as to the possibility of continuing for long in that style, replied that she made .up for the loss by selling k quantity. No amount of business will pay the haulier unless he arranges his charges so that the revenue per mile is surely less than the total cost not only of waiting his lorry, but also of running his business as well.

It is a fact, nevertheless, that, however carefully a man may have reckoned up his costs' he is seldom sufficiently:confident in his results to be abIe to withstand a charge of profiteering unless he has the figures of other people to go_ by. He has generally no argument to use against the client who states that he is in the habit of getting certain specified work 'done by a :competing firm of carriers at half the price which is demanded by our doubting friend. He feels that perhaps he made a mistake after all in those figures, and, hesitating, is lost, and takes the new job on at the rate offered, thinking that he will go over his costs again and find out where he was wrong. Such. weakness is frequently his undoing, for, generally, the other party to the transaction is only "trying it on." It is with a view to giving the new haulier a base line, so ta. speak, from which he may argue in ease of a dispute, rather than as fixing a definite scale of charges, that I again publish the following table; which I gave in these. eoltmins la months ago. . They stow, approximately,the amounts-which should be charged for the hire of.motor vehicles of various sizes, including steam wagons, and are the rates which are -in general use throughout the Midland counties.

It will be noted thatathe charges are reckoned up, in every ease,' on two bases—distance -and time. The charge made should be that which is the greater, in. any particular case. For example, let us assume that the -haulier is asked to take h load of three tons for a distance of 20 miles. If the run is free from stops for loading or unloading, etc., it should not occupy more than a couple of hours, then the charge should be according to the mileage, namely, 20 times half-sa crown, or 50s. On the -other hand, the job may invelve the lorry in waiting in the market-place for four hours. In that ca-se the total time will be six hours, two hours travelling and four hours' waiting. For that the charge should be made on the timebasis of the i0s. per hour, and would amount -to

THE SKOTCH.

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Locations: Lincoln

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