Flood of A-licence Vehicles Coming?
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AWARNING that a large number of laid-up vehicles would be put into operation with A licences by the purchasers of the Road Haulage Executive's assets was given _by Mr. S. Moss, secretary of the Amalgamated Horse and Motor Owners' Association, of Manchester. when he spoke at the annual dinner of the Birmingham Horse and Motor Vehicle Owners' Association in Birmingham last week.
Many vehicles with contract-A licences had been acquired when longdistance haulage was nationalized, he said. This had been a mistake and many were now redundant. It was unfair to existing private-enterprise hauliers that they should have to compensate the Government for the losses caused by denationalization, particularly as they could not compete on equal terms with the new operators for 12 months. The injustice had been brought to the notice of the Minister of Transport by the association.
Mr. Moss described nationalization as
"colossal failure." The widespread use of C-licenue vehicles had not merely been a manifestation of a personal dislike of nationalization. State-owned vehicles had failed to deliver the goods.
Deploring the " incompleteness " of denationalization, Mr. Moss said that the 25-per-cent. increase in Government-controlled vehicles compared with the total before nationalization represented a serious danger. The R.H.E. could set up a number of companies on a semi-commercial basis.
The anomaly of special parties being carried by coaches on a regular service was mentioned by Mr. R. Brandon, traffic manager of the Birmingham and Midland Motor Omnibus Co., Ltd. A party being taken to a theatre was, he said, "special," but this did not apply to the coach if it ran regularly. The coaches should be licensed to operate a service, but how the regulations could be changed to enforce this was not easy to determine