General Post
Page 55
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INOR mysteries about the road transport industry, when so many larger issues remain in doubt, would lose what interest attaches to them if they were iolved, and are therefore not worth probing too far. It vould'be something of a disappointment to find a simple :xplanation of the periodical re-shuffle of certain of the :hairrnen of Traffic Commissioners and Licensing kuth ori ties. • Nearly a year ago the Government promised to let Wales lave a senior civil servant to represent the Ministry of fransport. The promise has been carried out by the ippointment, which becomes effective on October• 1, of An A. G. Curtis as Transport Commissioner for Wales ind Monmouthshire. Mr. Curtis comes over from the :"...ast Midland Traffic Area, where he has been Licensing kuthority for five years, but his new work will not cover icensing. Exactly what he will do may not be clear until le has been in Wales for some time.
Mr. C. R. Hodgson, the present South Wales Licensing kuthority, will fill the vacancy in the East Midland Area. -us place, in turn will be filled from below by the Clerk to he Commissioners, Mr. Idris Owen, who was at one time n the Manchester office of the North Western Area. This rea includes North Wales, where the Licensing Authority, Ar. F. Williamson, will continue to function, except that, vhere he might previously have been called upon to epresent the Ministry on some matter other than licensing, he duty will now pass to Mr. Curtis or his deputy, the ame Mr. Owen who is to take office in South Wales. The kfgame of general post may seem the logical result of he agointment of Mr. Curtis, but this is not the first time hat something similar has happened, for less apparent easons. Of the present Licensing Authorities, five held hat office 10 years ago, but only three of them, Maj. F. S. astwood, Brig. R. J. 0. Dowse and Mr. W. F. Quin, ave remained in the same areas, Mr. S. W. Nelson has hilted from Newt•astle to Bristol, and Mr. U. J. Thom rom the South Wales to the South Eastern Area.
A Curious Habit
The habit of interchanging Licensing Authorities, which as now been extended to Mr. Hodgson, is curious. It an hardly be regarded as a form of promotion, for the osts are on the same salary scale, with the exception of ,ondon, where higher rates of pay are traditional and not ierely in the road transport industry.
An Authority who moves to another area may take with im his own methods, to 'which the local operators will ave to become accustomed. Although, on the whole, le licensing procedure is administered with remarkable ansistency, there are bound to be some differences of pproach. Each Authority may vary in the extent to which e allows hauliers to deviate from their declaration of ormal user without being required to apply for a new cence. He may have his own ideas about the exact form I agreement before a contract-A,licence is granted; or bout the procedure for replacing special A With ordinary licences.
If there were some fundamental reason for switching icensing Authorities, one might expect it to operate also the level of the Associations serving road transport. In tct, their area or divisional secretaries rarely, if ever, lange to another part of the country, although -this might e thought more likely to happen in view of the fact that
some areas or divisions are much bigger than others in respect of membership, and the job of local secretary is no doubt rated accordingly.
Nor are operators themselves prone to take their businesses from one area to another. They may expand and they may acquire new depots, but their main office seems invariably to be anchored down to their place of origin. For this the licensing system is largely responsible. Even the special A licence, handed without charge and without strings attached to the purchaser of a transport unit, and to successive purchasers while the licence is current, will be withheld if the Licensing Authority is not satisfied that the specified base is one from which the vehicles can Serve substantially the same area as when they were with British Road Services. The Licensing Authorities who may be sent from one end of the country to another can deny the same change of scene to the operators under their jurisdiction.
No Distinction in Work -There is another sense in which the work of the Licensing Authorities is more curtailed than that of operators. One point that the division into traffic areas ignores is the distinction between the type of Work done by road transport operatOrs. The trade associations, although they also may divide themselves into areas, show themselves aware that their membership covers a variety of interests.
On the passenger side there are separate associations corresponding with the broad divisions of function. On the goods side there is only one major body, the Road Haulage Association—plus the affiliated National Association of Furniture Warehousemen and RemoVers and the separate and competitive National Association of Road Transport Clearing Houses—and they have a number of important functional groups.
• This division. into groups, although it has proved useful to the RH.A., has no place in the licensing system; nor is the system really satisfactorily equipped to deal with applications to carry goods over long distances. On the passenger .side there has to be frequent contact between Traffic Commissioners. If a service operates in more than one traffic area, the operator must hold a road service licence or backing in respect of each area affected. TheCommissioners who deal with his applications for backings may impose their own conditions, and the details are published in Notices and Proceedings folr the areas concerned.
On the goods side there is much less opportunity for operators to keep in touch with what is happening in other parts of the 'country, This is proving a handicap, particularly to the carriers of specialized traffics, such as liquids in bulk, that may frequently be sent over long distances. An application for a tanker may be of a kind to attract objections from established hauliers in several traffic areas,. but many of them may know nothing about it unlessthey are prepared to buy and Study all the various editions of Applications and Decisions,
It would help if separate volumes were published in • respect of vehicles intended to carry only one type of traffic. Operators not interested in those traffics would not miss the details from the publication in their own area, and would welcome the omission. Long-distance hauliers might ask that they also should be included in the national edition.