Awareness Without Alarm
Page 32
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" o it yourself" is a movement extending far beyond its natural realm of household maintenance. It is being practised widely in transport, as the latest figures of C-licence vehicles and operators emphasize. In the year ended last March, the ancillary vehicle population increased by 72,107 to over a million and the number of Clicensees by 40,567 to more than half a _million. Even allowingfor the disposal of vehicles for which the licences have not been surrendered, the rate of expansion of C-licencetransport shows no sign of abating. A significant trend is the rapid rise in the number of C-licence vehicles in the unladen-weight classes normally used by professional hauliers. A contributor to this issue finds it disquieting and believes that hauliers are not securing their fair share of the greater volume of traffic now passing by road.
Statistics can be misleading when considered in isolation. The increase in C-licence vehicles must be viewed in association with the expansion of trade. The situation is not yet alarming, but hauliers cannot afford to be complacent. Still greater efforts must be made to give trade and industry the service they require and to prove to them that the professional carrier can often compete On more than equal terms with the C-licensee's own transport department.
The growing use of specialized vehicles may create difficulties for the haulier of moderate means. It may, however, be possible to reduce the amount of capital locked up in such equipment by employing dual-purpose or detachable bodies, or articulated outfits •with interchangeable_ semitrailers.
Professional carriers will continue to occupy a key position in transport, but they will require to study carefully every development in technique and every change in industrial conditions. The haulier of the future must be a trained businessman as well as a practical transport operator if he is to expand his traffic.