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248 
COSTS QUESTIONNAIRE FOR HAULIERS
Page 56
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FROM OUR INDUSTRIAL CORRESPONDENT
AQUESTIONNAIRE from the National Board for Prices and Incomes will go out this week-end to the Road Haulage Association, British Road Services and a number of haulage firms. It will seek to get preliminary replies as to why it has been necessary to recommend three increases in haulage rates in nine months.
The board, which met under the chairmanship of Mr. Aubrey Jones (a former Conservative minister) for the first time yesterday, Thursday, decided to formulate the series of questions as the first step in its probe into road haulage rates, referred to it by Mr. George Brown.
The questions will seek to discover the relationship between costs and charges over the past few years and the way they are likely to go in the future. When replies have been received the board will call representatives of the industry and of individual firms to give oral evidence. In order to speed up the inquiry meetings will, for the most part, be in private without the formalities of public hearings involving legal representation and evidence on oath.
By this means, Mr. Jones hopes to have his report out by the end of next month at the latest, to meet the new starting date for higher rates requested by the Government. The findings will have no sanction apart from the pressure of public opinion. But Mr. Jones and his colleagues clearly hope that if their report shows that hauliers have been a little too quick to mass on higher costs to their customers in higher rates without trying to absorb at least a part through greater efficiency. there will be second thoughts.