The Careful Costing of the Single Motorvan.
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"I can't tell you exactly what it costs us. Probably a good deal more than the old horsed vans, but, of course, it does more." These and their like are words that we often hear during our constant intercourse with users. The lesson of better service and its tonic result on business turnover is being learned very widely and with almost unexpected rapidity.
The more careful and systematic user invariably checks his outgoings, and ascertains at first hand the financial result of more modern methods. But there is no gainsaying the fact that a considerable proportion of the smaller users, those who employ the lighter-van models and the parceleszs particularly, assume that their costs are higher, but that that is a consideration of little moment, because of the better service of which they have convincing daily demonstration.
The very excellence of the new service has, in many eases, fostered a spirit of unconcern with regard to costs in the minds of many owners of one or two vans. With possessors of fleets it is invariably different ; it should be so in all cases. The parcelear owner and the tradesman who runs his one or two machines himself should ascertain definitely if, as a matter of fact, his superseded horsed vehicles did not actually cost him as much as his new plant.
Costing is a simple enough matter to the man who lives by buying and selling, yet we have been surprised over and over again to receive plaintive applications, from apparently successful tradesmen, for outlines of costs systems for their one or two motor vans. The simpler the system the less it is liable to derangement. A sell-recording mileometer -or, at any rate, one of which the indicators cannot easily be deranged, and a. straightforward system of booking everything issued for the running and repair of each vehicle can most surely be evolved without trouble by any tradesman who can properly conduct his more ordinary business.
Increased service must not be allowed to suggest the needlessness of costing. The fact that journeys are often of the express-delivery and unplanned order should be allowed to make no difference ; the mileometer and the log-book will account for all time and distance, however it may be employed. Few trades men know how much a mile their horsed vans cost them. fewer still would admit that the cost often approximates 10d, per mile. As a rule, horse costs are calculated, if at all, on an annual basis. Nowadays such costs must, to be of analytical use, be extracted at least weekly, as well as, if possible, on a. mileage basis. Only by regular, albeit simple, costing can the true value of the single delivery van or parcelcar be assessed. In nine cases out of ten it is not fair to
assume that it is costing more pro rata than the horsed
plant which it has superseded. We have demonstrated this in articles from the Editor's pen on a number of
recent occasions. It should not be sufficient glibly to reply to inquiries, "1 daresay it costs more, but it does more." To reasonable Cafieg it should, of course, do more and in the long rug it should cost less.