POINT OF PRINCIPLE
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CONTINUING her sales campaign on behalf of the railways, ■ ...• the Minister of Transport has rebuked hauliers mildly for not making more use of Freightliners. She expressed her disappointment at the annual dinner of the Road Haulage Association last week and reminded members that for months they had demanded the right to use the Freightliner terminals and that the Opposition in the House of Commons had played variations on the same theme.
Mrs. Castle admitted that there might be operational reasons for the delay in switching from road to rail. Working patterns had to be changed and schedules revised. She might have remembered also that some hauliers would have to meet a considerable capital outlay, that there is hostility from the road transport unions as well as the National Union of Railwaymen and' that the proper rates for Freightliner traffic are still the subject of negotiation.
TEMPORARY HESITATION?
Adroitly the Minister gave the impression that the hesitation was only temporary. Hauliers would be bound to come in under the shelter of the railways as soon as they could arrange it, she implied. If they wanted to come to terms with the "very tough competition" which would be provided in due course by her proposed National Freight Organization, said Mrs. Castle, they had "better start making full use of the Freightliners". Otherwise they would find themselves at a serious disadvantage in the service they offered to industry.
Apparently this valiant threat was greeted with some scepticism. There was no such reaction to her criticism that, after all she had done for them, hauliers were not "queueing up at the doors early". The assumptions which the Minister appeared to be making ought to be given more careful consideration.
POINT OF PRINCIPLE
Behind the long-drawn-out bickering with the NUR there was an important point of principle. The railways are no longer common carriers in the sense that they are happy to carry whatever traffic is offered to them. They are still not entitled on the other hand to make distinctions according to the source from which the traffic arises. Where they run a passenger service it is equally available to everybody. They have no warrant for dealing with freight traffic in any other way. The attitude of the NUR was therefore indefensible. This was freely recognized by all political parties as well as by the railways and practically every section of the public. Had the NUR not seen reason in the end drastic action would have had to be taken. The final agreement to allow free use of the terminals was greeted with general relief.
Concessions which had to be made to achieve this result may cost the railways or the taxpayer a good deal in due course. For the moment the important point is that the principle was vindicated. It is for this that the hauliers and the politicians, including the Minister, were fighting. Now that the issue has been settled, however, there is no greater an obligation on the parties concerned than there would have been if the NUR had not exercised its veto.
HAULIER MUST DECIDE
It is up to the individual haulier just as it is up to the individual trader to decide whether his interests are best served by sending his traffic through two Freightliner terminals. Provided that this is clearly recognized, he is grateful to Mrs. Castle for the part that she played in ' making it possible. She has said that if, during her term of office as Minister of Transport, there is a single achievement of which she is truly proud it is the successful persuasion applied to the NUR.
What she has not made clear is whether she believes firmly that the freeing of the terminals is to the benefit of the railways as well as of the hauliers. Her cajolery at last week's function was one-sided. She implied that hauliers were making no great effort to use the Freightliners. Apparently she did not ask herself whether there was more that the railways could do from their side to make the proposition attractive.
The railways have at least acknowledged that they want the hauliers' traffic. They may be given the credit for weighing the pros and cons. Freightliners are intended both to attract business and to make a profit. The alternative will still be longdistance road transport either by the haulier or by the trader in his own vehicles.
From the railways' point of view the ideal would be merely to run the trains—and this may ultimately be their task when the NFO is set up. It may be suspected that the customer who decides for himself that the railways are to have his long-distance traffic would prefer them to carry out the whole operation. He does not want to be saddled with the responsibility of taking his goods to and from the terminals.
Hauliers have complained loudly and often enough about delays in turnround for the railways to be well aware of this problem. It must be plain also that the profitable part of a long-distance journey is that spent on the trunk routes between towns. What the haulier gains on this offsets what may be a loss at each end of the journey.
SAME PATTERN
The pattern is the same for a long-distance journey by rail with the main line corresponding to the trunk route. It has been alleged that to convince a trader that he ought to use a Freightliner the railways have offered a remarkably cheap rate for the rail portion of the journey. The intention may be to attract traffic at the beginning of the venture in which case the rates may be expected to go up before long.
The temptation to the trader in present circumstances is strong. If he uses his own vehicles he knows how large a proportion the terminal costs are of the whole and also that there is no way of avoiding them. If he can save part of the trunking part of the journey he is almost bound to use the Freightliner.
For the haulier the situation is the opposite. With increasing congestion and delays in towns he may be relying on the trunk journeys to keep his operations economic. The freeing of the Freightliner terminals is of small value to him if he has nothing to gain from making use of them. Even in the best of circumstances, when he is making a profit on each portion of the journey, some part of this profit is lost if he has to pay the railways the same price as his customers pay him.
The normal commercial solution would -be for the railways to regard the haulier as their agent who is entitled to a discount. The possibility is remote if indeed the railways are not meeting their own costs even when they receive the full rate.