HUMPTY DUMPTY
Page 72
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trLIKE the Pharisee in the parable the haulier would very much wish to be as other men are. Outside interests including Government departments tend to assume that people engaged in an industry are cut roughly to a pattern. They suppose therefore that all hauliers are alike. Unwilling to change their belief they follow the usual human method of taking the lowest common denominator as the standard. The process is responsible for a good deal of the unfavourable publicity which confronts the reputable operator with a public image he can scarcely recognize.
It may be as a consequence of a kind of revulsion that he finds himself preoccupied with the concept of normality. It pursues him like the Minotaur up and down the labyrinth of the licensing system. Perhaps it has had more written about it than any other transport topic. The normal user defies definition. Is it 51 per cent., 25 per cent., or is every Licensing Authority's and every haulier's normality different? Does it apply to the area covered rather than to the goods carried or vice versa? How far does it affect inward traffic which may or may not be a return load?
Until the Transport Act 1953 the subject was hardly ever discussed. This legislation gave the Licensing Authorities power to revoke or suspend a licence if a statement of intention made in the application was not , fulfilled. The power has been exercised not too frequently and usually in flagrant circumstances. The haulier whose business changes its character has little difficulty in satisfying the Licensing Authority provided he keeps him informed and does not confront him with an entirely new set of conditions when the licence expires.
One weapon less
Perhaps the subject comes up so frequently because the haulier likes to feel, in a variegated and changing industry, that at least one aspect of his business is normal. There is no other industry where it is a breach of the law to be otherwise. If the abnormal element or lunatic fringe could be eliminated the public would choose a different and more flattering—although perhaps no less misleading—norm for the road transport operator and those interests which are antagonistic to the haulier would have one weapon the fewer with which to attack him.
Rates and costs present a similar problem. For no two operators are alike. Here again the interposition of the authorities has brought the matter to a head. There was little trouble in what some hauliers may already be calling the good old days when an occasional general recommendation from the Road Haulage Association was sufficient to set in motion innumerable applications to customers, The extent to which these applications were successful varied within wide limits but the process appeared to work reasonably satisfactorily.
No normal haulier
The Prices and Incomes Board brought the machine to a halt. It refused to adopt the pretence that there was such a thing as a normal haulier. Unfortunately, having broken up this particular image, it was unable to put anything in its place. It left the customer with the impression that he need pay no more for road haulage—that in a sense he was performing a patriotic duty by refusing.
Some hauliers managed to salvage a rates increase from the wreckage. Those less fortunate were left to bear what the RHA had calculated as a 5 per cent. increase in costs, including a 6 per cent, rise in basic wages, a 50 per cent, increase in vehicle licence duty and increases in sundry items such as national insurance contributions, maintenance, local rates and overheads in general. Then followed the official standstill starting in July 1966 and the period of severe restraint in the first half of 1967.
A courageous and ingenious attempt is now being made to put the pieces together again. The Prices and Incomes Board, perhaps as a result of an attack of conscience, appeared to have welcomed the suggestion that selected hauliers with a properly documented case for a rates increase should put it into effect or announce their intention of doing so. The Board would then hope that the matter was referred to it and that any recommendation it made would not only be accepted by the Government but would be adopted as a pattern, not throughout the road haulage industry but at least in that section of it where the circumstances were roughly the same as in one of the test cases.
This would not be a blanket recommendation in the sense that that particular manoeuvre was condemned by the Board. The result would be very little different. As soon as one or two guinea pigs had survived the operation the passion for normality would show itself. Many other hauliers would claim that they came in the same category and would seek a discussion with their customers. There would be successes and failures. The scattered pieces would be laboriously reassembled and Humpty Dumpty would be perched precariously back on the wall looking very much as he did in the first place.
The Board could go no farther towards admitting that it had made a mistake by examining the road haulage industry as if it was like any other industry. The idea dies hard that road haulage rates can be fixed and classified in the same way as many other prices. Within the EEC there have been strenuous efforts for several years to impose compulsory rates with a tolerance on each side, in the first instance for international hauls where the load exceeds 5 tons and the distance 150 km, but later for other categories of traffic.
Objections made by some of the countries in the Common Market have held up the project. Recent reports indicate that it may be necessary to study the whole transport policy programme afresh. It would be to the advantage of British operators if a solution could be deferred until Britain had become a member—assuming that the application is successful. Whatever influence can then be exerted from this country might well be directed towards resisting the attempt to lay down statutory rates. The experience of the Prices and Incomes Board can yet prove a useful warning.
What has happened in the US, where tariffs are laid down, may discourage British operators who see an advantage in this procedure. The Interstate Commerce Commission has revised the rules governing the proof needed for general rates increases. Formidably detailed evidence is required from representative carriers. There will be cost studies and traffic studies. Information will be sought on what is described as the optimum profit level, that is to say the amount which operators need over and above their operating expenses to attract capital. After this the requests from the Prices and Incomes Board may seem modest.
Janus