Regional round-up
Page 34
Page 35
Page 36
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
West Yorkshire Part 11
Pay discipline fears
Pioneer viewpoint on wages and many other topics
by John Darker
NO ONE can predict whether the present form of wage restraint will last much longer. I met one transport pioneer during my recent visit to I;eeds and Bradford who told me that but for the present pay policy drivers would have asked for £15 more.
This haulier—Mr Jack Bell of Edwards-Bell Transport—is not alone in fearing the consequences to road haulage, and to the country, if the dykes of rational pay discipline are breached—and for the last time.
Mr Bell is one of the fast diminishing band of road haulage pioneers who launched themselves on a receptive market at a tender age and with little capital. In his case at 19 with £50 to £60.
By the time he was 22 he was operating 10 wagons and thereafter his progress was not in doubt. His was among the first three firms to be nationalised in 1947/48 and he worked in BRS for 18 months as a unit controller.
He recalls those days with sardonic humour. A 50-vehicle fleet was inflated to 90 vehicles and he took a dim view of managing such an outfit for £750 a year. The paperwork and form filling for things like car expenses infuriated him.
Instructed by senior panjandrums from London to reduce the use of sub-contractors, Jack Bell blew his top. "These small hauliers helped me to build up by business. I resent an instruction to dispense with their services."
The incident led to his resignation and within days he had started a transport/warehousing business in Shipley. Mileage radius was restricted to 25 miles. He had enough energy to acquire a taxi business and to engage in car and petrol sales in a big way.
Going back to his early days, Jack Bell recalls pioneering trips to Devon, three return trips a week, carrying wool from Bradford to Ashburton for blanket making. Each return journey was 625 miles and the three trips brought in £27. Road haulage services were "four or five bob" a ton cheaper than rail freight and next-day delivery for outwards and return loads was highly attractive to traders.
Dividends
This specialisation in wool traffic paid dividends for Mr Bell, for over 30 years his firm, Bells Transport Services, carried about 80 per cent of all wool ex Bradford area. Jack never bothered to form a limited company in all his years as a successful operator. The moral to this story, it must be assumed, is that the business never over-reached itself. The credit extended to it was always more than covered by revenue.
Mr Bell confesses that in those early years he knew "nowt abaht balance sheets." He countered any defects in his business acumen, if there were any, by working 100 hours a week. This habit has lasted; today, he seldom returns home before midnight or lam.
A detailed knowledge of the wool trade and the haulage rates attached to it inspired Mr Bell to form the Bradford Haulage Federation. Rates protection and rationalisation preceded the successful wages negotiation.
The abolition of carriers' licensing, in his view, was a curse to the industry. He boasts of the vigilante committee of the Bradford Haulage Federation which vetted As and Ds to limit unwelcome competition.
As chairman of Bradford Road Haulage Group Training Association Jack Bell is glad to be able to commend the Group's excellent facilities in premises he helped—as a confirmed do-it-yourself enthusiast —to convert.
Paradox
It is a paradox that Jack Bell, whose drivers were nonunion for most of his career, should in recent years have chaired pay negotiations with the trade unions. Perhaps the key to this is the man's unrivalled knowledge of the industry that he has served with such devotion for a lifetime.
If area or regional JICs form the pattern of the future the Jack Bells of the employers' side will need to be active to educate hauliers and customers in the necessity of an adequate rate structure.
During my visit to West Yorkshire road hauliers I met another character old enough to have worked in the industry in its formative days, in the Thirties.
In the course of a talk with Mr Jeff Miles, managing director of J. Miles Ltd, of Stanningley, Leeds, I met Mr Alfred Darling, who had been an employee of the firm for more than 50 years.
Market work
Mr Darling told me that his first job was driving a horse and -cart as a coal man and market carrier. The market work developed because coal pits were closed on Saturdays. The diversification from coal to market work led, through shop deliveries, to furniture removing.
Mr Darling recalled collecting coal money from householders when he was a mere eight years old. From this age he learned the best days to press for payment. Today, there are managing directors who know the names of all the clerical staff of customer firms involved in the business of settling invoices. There is nothing new in credit control!
Incidentally, Mr Darling thought his £2 a week wage in 1926 was equal to £70 a week today!
Mr Jack Bell told me he had left school 50 years ago and after an apprenticeship in joinery — which sometimes involved taking a load of woodwork from Bradford to Leeds or Halifax—he had decided that road haulage offered the prospects of a more lucrative career. Mr Bell's fortuitous introduction to the industry can be paralleled today, though new entrants in 1976 find less opportunity than he did to make rings round the railway in terms of speed and service.
Mr Miles' father was an early member of Leeds Removal Contractors' Association, a bcdy founded in 1901 with horse-drawn drays as vehicles. An old poster in Jeff's office gives the rates per hour for hiring an open van with one man-5s an hour and a covered van with two men lOs per hour. A motor van in those halcyon pre-first world war days cost 12s 6d with two men, time being charged from stables to stables. Charges had to be paid on delivery and the remover was not responsible for damage to goods caused by the bad condition of the roads. In that cautionary observation lay the first seeds of the elaborate Conditions of Carriage which now protect most road hauliers.
Jeff Miles is today chairman of Yorkshire section of the British Association of Removers. It is paradoxical that the firm had only one A-licence before the 1968 Act because existing removers opposed every Miles bid in the licensing courts. It was impossible to obtain "proof of need" from domestic customers to support a claim for more longdistance vehicles and the business eventually expanded on the strength of trade support for the carriage of new furniture—still the company's mainstay.
Turned down
Attempts to join NAFWR, the predecessor of BAR, were turned down three times, partly because the Association insisted that the storage facilities were inadequate.
Today, when BAR is fighting for its life, Mr Miles has distinct reservations about recruiting the one-vehicle operators whose competition is so ruthless at the bottom end of the market. There are six BAR member firms in Leeds, but 30 removers ! So J. Miles Ltd concentrates on better-class removals while the major part of the 22-vehicle fleet carries new furniture for local manufacturers.
Responding to pleas from BAR hq to try to recruit new members, the Yorkshire section has held open meetings in Leeds and Bradford. One or two new members have been roped in, but most of the small removers present have declined to join. "They feel that joining BAR would make them part of the establishment. Perhaps they suspect that membership would involve them in expense to raise the level of their service. My Dad felt exactly the same; he wanted to preserve his independence above everything else."
The Town Street, Stanningley, premises of J. Miles Ltd appear to be fated, for the company's tenure is fraught by the insecurity of temporary planning permission, extended for five years in 1970. In 1974 some proposed alterations were approved, but in recent months two serious fires have done damage amounting to many thousands of pounds. Mr Miles, in common with many businessmen, had insured the property for a third more than its market value; he had not realised that rebuilding costs are a very different matter. The premises, incorporating a Victorian school, would have cost a fortune to rebuild exactly as before the fire damage, but though some cheaper materials were used to repair damaged stone walls the net loss to the business was around £20,000.
Almost more alarming than the fires is the feeling of Mr Miles that at least one of them was arson. There had been an earlier instance of sabotage when some Miles vehicles were attacked and tyres slashed. Jeff has speculated on the motives of the person or persons who appear to " have it in for him" and one theory is that business jealousy is the reason; J. Miles Ltd, far from being defeatist about the business slump, has actively developed its business, not least in Northern Ireland and in Europe.
Mr Miles had two final thoughts about property. He stressed that rebuilding costs are likely to rise by at least 10 per cent each year, so the insurance cover should be on a sliding scale. A further point concerns the lack of building allowances for road transport premises; why should a fur manufacturer qualify for grants while a transport firm gets nothing?
Mr Miles' employees are non-union though the firm is a member of the Leeds Haulage Federation and pays wages rather higher than average. The company's wage structure incorporates bonus on drops made and, according to Mr Miles, it amounts to profitsharing. The company tries to estimate gross profits in advance and gear bonus rates appropriately. One thing insisted upon is that wages are not related to time.
J. Miles Ltd is an associated member of the FTA. The firm used to be in the RHA and it favours the national statutory JIC rather than the area scheme which is supported by the trade unions, I asked Jeff why he had pulled out of the RHA after being a fairly appreciative member from the age of 16.
It appears that there was a dispute about whether a cylinder head had been repaired properly by a garage. The RHA technical staff were brought in, and ultimately solicitors were involved. In a word, .Jeff felt that the RHA had "no teeth " in the particular matter involved, Unusually for a practical haulier, Jeff takes a keen interest in management and for some time has been working on a thesis for presentation to the British Institute of Management. Initially, he became interested in the BIM through a Quick Reading course and recently he attended the Munich conference of the Young European Management Association with another Leeds colleague. He used this forum to complain about the niggardly number of permits made available to British international road transport operators. With 15 years' experience of Continental operations, Jeff was in a good position to talk with authority.
Surprising
A surprising feature of the Miles business is its use of a £12,000 computer being purchased on hire purchase over four years. Mr P. G. Carlisle, the accountant, said the company was led to purchase the computer by the availability of service facilities—and alternative back-up facilities — in Leeds. The machine had greatly speeded up all routine accounting functions and he felt it had really paid for itself in a year, though the original justification was that it would save one girl's wages over five years —worth perhaps half the total cost—while the other half would be saved, or earned, in improved cash flow. • The Miles company knows the value of publicity. It runs a football team and sponsors the Miles Morley Mustangs at Basketball !