The price of safety
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To meet the new and proposed regulations on the carriage of hazardous loads is likely to cost £2,500 per artic tanker by CM reporter OPERATING vehicles carrying hazardous loads—particularly chemicals—has always been a relatively expensive business. Now the effects of new and proposed legislation are likely to include an increase of about £2,500 per articulated vehicle; and the wider effect is likely to he that only sizeable and fairly sophisticated companies will in future be able to afford to engage in this traffic.
Those, •at least, are the views of Mr David Brown, general manager of Harold Wood Sc. Sons Ltd, and a director of Tankfreight Ltd.
Like other operators tank hauliers will have to meet the costs of introducing tachographs and other EEC-inspired legislation but on top of this there will be costly changes in tanks to meet the United Nations specifications groups 1 and 2 over the next three years, which will alter the thickness of the barrels, the design of the "shoulders" and require the fitting of safety bars at front and rear. Currently changes are being made to the double-pole wiring— which requires the fitting of an external cut-off switch in addition to the inside master switch; and on the horizon are the Home Office regulations which are likely to be phased over the period between now and 1978 and whose effect Mr Brown's company has estimated as shown in the accompanying list.
In addition to all this, Mr Brown points out that responsible people in the chemical and haulage industries are trying to introduce changes ahead of legislation—particularly on control of safe parking, routeing and so on. This development, which is being worked out jointly by the Chemical Industries Association and the Road Haulage Association, will include the inspection of operator's facilities, particularly the testing of hoses.
The effect on rates can be imagined. The combination of new safety measures on vehicles, limitations on routemg, the requirement for new emergency procedures and more intensive driver training, coming on top of the changes in driving hours and rest periods which are imminent, results in what Mr Brown calls "a four-way pressure on price." • Because the majority of chemical companies are involved either individually or through the CIA with the introduction of the new safety measures, they are well aware of the need to face up to higher rates for the carriage.
David Brawn's company has perhaps encountered this situation earlier than some: Harold Wood is already operating vehicles that meet the 1978 UN specifications—for example in having in thickness stainless steel tanks with an obviously detrimental effect on the payload capacity. "The customers concerned," he says, "are quite willing to meet the cost of us doing this now because some of the products involved are quite dangerous. Indeed we are already operating vehicles with large sections of motorway protection barrier on each side—the sort of protection that is not yet legislation but again has been done with the co-operation of the chemical company concerned."
Although the increases in costs, and •the associated rise in rates, are largely accepted by customers as inevitable, Harold Wood and Sons are working hard on ways to contain those increases where possible. Says David Brown: "We are looking for new ways of getting greater utilisation from the equipment, perhaps changing the delivery times, looking at night loading or weekend loading, and ways of using that equipment capital more productively in each 24 hours. Now this obviously requires a great deal of co-operation with the customer and a great deal more involvement in his business than perhaps :has been the case in the past. We are getting that co-operation, and I think that the efforts to contain costs in this way really depend on the building up of long-term trust between' the haulier and the producer.
"Despite all this, we shan't see rates coming down, merely being contained a bit. Looking at carrying weights alone, if you put roll-over shoulders on a vehicle to meet the proposals, you are taking up I ton."
The staff cost of a hazardousload haulier is in itself a major item. Tanker drivers can now pull in £100 a week or more and each week's 'training costs the company about £500 in direct costs, wages and •the loss of earning power for the company. All Harold Wood drivers get a week's induction course and a refresher of up to a week each 18 months.
The company now uses a policy of voluntarily routeing hazardous tankers on motorway and A-roads only, avoiding city centres wherever possible. All these loads are now routed (including even petroleum spirit movements) to keep these vehicles away from narrow and difficult sections, awkward bridges and corners. The company has just completed an agreed routeing scheme in co-operation with the unions so that the mileage and exact route for each principal delivery run are laid down and each new route is measured and logged. Mr Brown hopes and believes that these routes will be accepted by local authorities introducing lorry routeing.
The company runs its own training school with a full-time instructor and David Brown believes that the standards which his and similar large companies operate as standard are not even being contemplated by some hauliers.
As he puts it : "If you have to have safe parking around the country you need a fairly complex organisation to keep aware of the places you can park; if you are going to have the capital to build a hazardous-load rig for £35,000 you have to have a fa!rly big organisation 'behind you; if you are going to train men to deal with 100 different hazardous products you need a fairly comprehensive training organisation; and you need a fairly complex structure to control those road routes so that you don't come up against a big 'barrier' somewhere which will send all the hard work down the drain. You need a complex management structure to keep ahead of the changes; and when you have taken all these steps, you need a complexity of traffic to make proper use of the elaborate organisation that you have then created."