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BY JAN
Page 82
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TO PI
Be damned and publish
The FTA claims that reference tariffs for international journeys are up to 40 per cent above actual market rates — presumably meaning the lowest.'
GOING ONE better than the Duke of Wellington, the Freight Transport Association's responses to suggested rates for international journeys was to damn them before they were even published. Most FTA members will not have seen what it is they are warned to avoid, so that the advice may stimulate their curiosity rather than persuade them to treat the reference tariffs, when finally published, with the indifference that they apparently deserve.
Many hauliers also may feel that what has aroused such opposition from the organisation representing their customers may be worth further investigation. It is the books most strongly condemned by the authorities that have the most avid readers.
In spite of the FTA's protests, the Department of Transport, after an initial hesitation, has raised no objection to publication. With the agreement of the other EEC members with whom the tariffs have been negotiated, they will be revealed in due course, and the public in general will have an opportunity of assessing the strength of the FTA's complaint.
It would not be easy in any case to prevent the tariffs from becoming common knowledge. They had to be submitted to organisations of users and forwarders as well as to the Government, and they must have had a wide enough circulation to ensure that the verdict of each organisation genuinely represented its members' opinion.
The FTA's verdict is uncompromising. Transport users should "totally disregardthe tariffs and continue to negotiate commercially.
Such a conclusion does not come as a surprise. Under the present system, the FTA has had few complaints that its members are being over-charged for the carriage of their goods by road to other countries. Why risk a change merely to please the Eurocrats?
The intensity of the reaction is less expected. Hauliers may wonder whether the FTA sees more danger in the tariffs than they do themselves.
They seemed prepared to play down the significance of the tariffs. Many of them regard the EEC's predilection for a grand supranational rates structure as a typical aberration, on a par with the common agricultural policy and the scrupulous insistence on conforming with the tachograph requirements. There was relief that the original plan for compulsory tariffs was watered down so that the schedules about to be published are for guidance only.
Against this background, the reaction of the FTA seems overemphasised and heavy-handed. The Association claims that the reference tariffs are up to 40 per cent above actual market rates — by which is meant presumably the lowest rates that any FTA member can obtain.
This was to be expected. Apart from the upward pressure from the other countries, British hauliers could not be expected to pitch their own recommendations too low. They know from experience that the reference tariffs, once published, will become the maximum. No customer is going to pay more.
Purely voluntary tariffs of the kind under discussion do not therefore seem to offer much of a threat to trade and industry. The FTA objection goes further and is on more general grounds. It regards all published tariffs as suspect, because "they cannot possibly take account of the many circumstances which influence a commercial road rate."
But if published — or even unpublished — tariffs could do what the FTA regards as impossible, it would be even more alarmed. Its distrust may go deeper than scepticism about feasibility.
Its members may already find that the haulier's negotiating position is strengthened by the disciplines he has had to master on the way to his Certificate of Professional Competence and by the knowledge gained from courses run by a wide variety of bodies (including the FTA).
The Association could loo, even further. It could anticipat: the time when rate-fixing ha: moved into the computer age when every haulier will have a his disposal a machine able tc tell him definitely what chargi he must make for a job if hi wishes to remain in business and exactly how much profit hl should get.
The computer would be prc grammed — and how delightel the Road Transport Industr Training Board will be to essiE in the task! — with a much wide range than -the collective view of Community haulierswhic the FTA contemptuously, if ba. flingly, dismisses as "a work c meaningless fiction." The cu: tomer who can shrug off th naive protestations of th average haulier will find harder to argue with a silico chip.
The rate thus established fc a particular journey will hay every appearance of satisfyin whatever criteria the FTA me have in mind in the reference a "commercial road rate." TImain difference in many cas( will be that the haulier, wit much more expertise at h command, will come out of tlexchanges rather better the when he relies on his own u aided efforts.
If this is a vision of the remo future, it is one that must ha
been seen already by many roi.
haulage leaders. They ha\ ample experience in the draftir of rates guides. They know the is a limit to the extent to whii the most carefully prepar: guide will fit an individual cas The aid of a computer mu mean greater precision.
It is even more certain, course, that whatever rate t most carefully nurturl machine comes up with, thE will be half a dozen or mc operators prepared to do the for 40 per cent less.
So that the FTA need r worry too much.