New opportunities for removers
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By S. Buckley
Assoc I nst T DESPITE the difficulties stemming from the Transport Bill when it becomes law, delegates to the annual conference of the National Association of Furniture Warehousemen and Removers which opened at Leicester on Monday were told in the opening paper that, in the ultimate, the future was good for them. This was given by Mr. A. W. Balne, transport consultant who, however, strongly recommended the Association to unite in meeting future problems.
Included in a wide range of subjects dealt with at the conference were salesmanship, training and costing methods. In association with the NAFWR Conference, the British Association of Overseas Furniture Removers concurrently held their conference at Leicester attended by delegates from many parts of the world including Australia, North America and South Africa.
At the outset of his paper Mr. Balne said that, while avoiding the politics surrounding the Bill, the danger of it was that it implied the planning of an industry without an insight into that industry. But except for minor amendments we were now landed with it and we knew where we stood.
Warning
In endeavouring to assess what the Bill meant for removers in the future Mr. Balne warned delegates as to the effect which the release of 900,000 vehicles—not exceeding 30cwt unladen or 3-1tons gross—from licensing, could mean to removers. There was a possibility of also having trailers of under 1 ton to contend with (which could result in a combined cubic capacity of 750ft) outside licensing. There was already the danger of competition from self-drive removers and there was a comparable development in the United States whence he had recently returned.
While there was comparative freedom allowed to operators of furniture vans and the conveyance of containers for overseas removal, roll-on /roll-off trailers were not so permitted. This could add difficulties bearing in mind that the day might come when the roll-on/roll-off service was extended to North America.
Regarding quantity and quality licensing, Mr. Balne said that, in this context, quality was a very loose expression—it was better to think in terms of operators' licences. Likewise, quantity licensing was a misnomer—the licences were primarily concerned with radius of operation.
But although the Bill in its final form might lay down one thing, how lawyers ultimately would knock it about was another. Here Mr. Balne cited the A licence which was considered an open licence in the 1930s until the industry came to learn about "normal user" It could be to the advantage of removers to apply for their operators' licences before the expiry of their existing licences. The reason was that it would enable them to apply without right Of objection so that they could get their licence right away. But Mr. Balne added a warning that the form of application would have to include disclosure of company details never before necessary, in an endeavour to prevent operators running under two hats. The intention was to close loopholes that existed at present but he had no doubt that attempts would be made in the future to open others.
As to variations in licensing conditions there was to be an inquisitional approach to the whole matter by extensive disclosure of company details. The trouble with the present system of licences was that one had to specify vehicles. But now the Minister of Transport had taken the worst part of the old system and included it in the new licensing structure.
Distasteful
Once an application was published it was open to objection from trade unions, trade associations, local authorities and the police. Mr. Balne said he found this distasteful. He could understand police coming in to prevent ex-criminals becoming operators. But he wished that trade associations had been kept out—the benefits obtained thereby were more than mitigated by the right of objection from trade unions. Such objections could be very serious indeed.
Thus a trade union could oppose on the grounds of condition of vehicles. And the information could have been supplied by the operator's own drivers. This was a new possibility and there was a danger of a dissatisfied driver providing such information, which would be most difficult to deal with in the traffic courts.
The right of objection by unions also included the right to object to a transport manager. Mr. Balne's fear was that where a transport manager was unpopular—but good— such objection by a union was going to be a real difficulty of deep concern to removers.
During subsequent discussions as to the need for transport managers to consolidate their position, the newly elected president, Mr. Arthur Edwards, acknowledged that the removal industry was lacking in its training facilities for transport managers despite their provision for other occupations. Something would have to be done to meet this need.
The need for selling a service was stressed by Mr. David Williams, director, BulContinued on page 44 lens Organization Ltd., in his paper entitled "Salesmanship and the removal man". Every employee who came into contact with a customer had a responsibility for selling his company. They could only do this if they knew what the selling points were —both of the company and the service it provided. Management had the means for ensuring that they did know.
There were four basic attributes needed in salesmanship—attitude, skill, knowledge and motivation. But a most important point was simply communication. In other words ensuring that both parties understood the same things from a communication.
Three people were interested in a sale: the salesman, the buyer and the companies. The most important was the buyer but people could buy the same service for different reasons. Many delegates might argue that their customers were only interested in price. But it was up to the seller to establish the motive of a buyer and increase his percentage of removals in which performance as well as price was considered.
New training course
A new training course as a service to industry was announced by Mr. C. Fee, a senior training officer of the Ministry of Labour's Training within Industry. The course is intended to advise senior management on using skilled operators as part-time instructors to brief supervisors on their role in developing the use of operators as instructors and to train selected operators in the techniques of the analysis of skill and instructing techniques.
Mr. Fee stressed that the Industrial Training Act had created an industrial revolution with already 21 training boards established covering over 1 1m employees, and more to follow. In the past, managements' attitude was that anyone who "deserved" to be advanced was promoted. In effect the management was saying that they liked the work the employee was doing and they wanted him to get other staff to do the same, but he was then practising on people and it was likely that not only would he be wrong but he would-continue to be wrong in the instructions he gave. The fact that the man was good at the job was no criterion for being responsible for training.
Still on the subject of training, Mr. L. V. Williamson, Midland regional manager, RTITB, explained to delegates the Board's levy and grant scheme. The Board realized the value of the manual schools provided by the Institute of the Furniture Warehousing and Removing Industry although the content of the courses varied from school to school. Consequently the Board had suggested that a standard form of syllabus be arranged by the Institute. If this was applied by all the schools they would be eligible for grants.
Mr. Williamson also disclosed that the removals and warehousing departments of the Board would be conducting residential courses for porters, packers, foremen, export packers, foremen instructors, driving instructors and mechanics. They would probably be of 10 days' duration. Also negotiation with the Leicester College of Technology had enabled the Board to offer a five-day management course commencing early in November.
"We cannot afford to be left behind in this international transport revolution—the time to act is now" was the advice given to delegates of the BAOFR Study Conference by Mr. Derek Blatchford, vice-president. In a paper entitled "Problems of managing co-operative activity" he disclosed the results of a recent questionnaire which he contended provided ample justification for this theme to be developed. Out of 20 members replying, the great majority showed interest in standardizing materials and bulk buying, Continental road ferry, deep sea container and air freight groupage.
Sixteen members answered the materials section, nominating no less than 14 different carton sizes—a similar experience was obtained with other materials. The need for standardization of both materials and methods was obviously there.
Analysing the membership, Mr. Blatchford said it consisted of 15 large national organizations, 44 medium-sized companies fulfilling regional needs and 77 smaller companies who carry out overseas removals in conjunction with their domestic removal trade. But the trade was becoming more competitive and with the advent of containerization there was the danger that shipping consortia would develop a policy of direct selling to the public as they were already offering a packing service.
Because much had been invested in containerization, Mr. 131atchford agreed that it must be made to work. But members must do this as a body, because then through strength they could negotiate a reasonable solution. But the greatest danger to the success of co-operative activities was the long-standing reluctance of many companies to participate.
The advantage of costing overseas removals on a 100lb net basis was advocated by Mr. Russell Naylor, Richardson Ltd., Toronto. The United States Government had gone for this procedure wholeheartedly, he said. The mover, selling a net weight rate on a door-to-door basis had an opportunity to obtain as high cube density as possible in order to make additional money on the steamship costs.
In the USA the national average cube density during 1966/67 was 6.31b per cu. ft. When making a rate quote the mover was quite safe. The achieved density was higher than 6.3 so the remover could take advantage of the saving made on the steamship.
But the weight basis was strongly op.posed by Mr. P. Lamer Gore, Security Storage Co., Washington, USA. "I could not disagree more", he said. Removers did not quote on either a cu. ft. or weight basis—they told the customer the overall cost which was what he wanted to know. How unfair it was to the customer not to know that cost before removal. His experience with foreign embassies was that they all, without exception, wanted to be quoted the total cost of a removal.
Trial shipments of household effects to Australia had been carried out with 20ft containers and indications were that removers could save up to E200 on the packing cases previously needed for traditional method. This was disclosed by Mr. P. W. Yarwood, general manager, Associated Container Transport Ltd.
Temperature considerations, important to most furniture but particularly so in the case of antiques, were no longer a problem. Mr. Yarwood said that when ACT's new service came into effect in 1969 with ships solely for the carriage of containers, furniture would be so positioned as to avoid extremes of temperature.
Comparative transit times for a doorto-door removal was then given from Birmingham UK to Ballarat Australia. By conventional transit the overall time was 48 days, but 16 of these were not spent on the voyage itself. By container the total time was 37 days with only seven days spent other than aboard ship.
The afternoon session was opened by Mr. W. D. Engeham, director, Marine Division, Bray Gibb Ltd. He explained the insurance implications of CMR and ECE conditions. He reminded the members that the growth of traffic by road across international frontiers had called for some international convention and the CMR was signed in Geneva in 1956 and became law in the UK in October 1967 when the Carriage of Goods by Road Act 1965 finally came into force. But a most important exclusion was that of furniture removals on the understanding that a separate convention would be arranged for them. Work was now going on with this separate convention and the "general conditions for international furniture removal" was published in April 1962 although they had not yet come into effect.
Tuesday's session 'concluded with a discussion on the problems of removal for US forces' personnel and on Wednesday Mr. G. A. Bartup, Trevor Williams Ltd., Hereford, gave a paper advocating the need to revise removers' costing methods. This paper will be reported in Management Matters next week.