Settling the account
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PROFESSIONAL hauliers have been caught bathing and ownaccount transport has run off with their clothes.
This was the punch-Tine from a fighting speech by Sir Dan Pettit, chairman of the National Freight Corporation, when he urged operators to marshal their forces for an attack on traders and industrialists who provide their own transport services.
Sir Dan hoisted the battle standard at the Road Haulage Association's annual conference in Bournemouth last week. But first he had a few harSh words to say about operators who had become complacent in thinking that their hold on the market was a stable one.
He said that the growth of "own-account" transport in the late Fifties was a reflection of the failure of the transport industry generally to appreciate the changes in the market place.
The figures showed that between 1953 and 1973 there was a massive increase of 67 per cent in the tonnage of goods moved and a major change in the share of the transport cake.
Traffic carried by road increased by 97 per cent. The sham of the market held by own-account operators in tonnage terms showed little change, though the work content doubled.
While hauliers' traffic grew by 155 per cent, own-account grew by only 61 per cent, said Sir Dan. This has lulled hauliers into a false sense of security.
Transport and distribution married to marketing quickly emerged in the late Fifties and went niatively unnoticed by most professional hauliers, who continued to be all things to all men. "We failed to uptrade our product and to market it more effectively," said Sir Dan.
"In the main we left it to the manufacturers to fill the vacuum created by market demand with systems of their own," he went on. "The initiative was still with the own-account sector."
There had been an impressive growth of the sophist cated tailor-made awn-account system. The new mix of the 1968 Act permitting ownaccount to move into hire and reward from the "consolidated world of new techniques," established by them in the Sixties, seriously exposed the flank of the professional haulier.
"We have been caught bathing and own-account transport has run away with our Olathe's—et 'least our Sunday suit. The cream of our work has been taken from us," said Sir Dan.
The 1968 Act had brought a Trojan Horse into the world of hire and reward transport and hauliers had to react and counter-attack.
And the time to do it was now. For Sir Dan told delegates that times were changing. The moment was now ripe for industrialists who provide their own transport services to re-appraise their business purposes in this field.
• Management of own-account transport frequently lay outside the main career development , opportunities of a business. Narrow, exclusive services also carried implications of extravagance and cost to the community at large.
The increasing importance of international movements put a high premium on the knowledge and expertise of the professional.
Although not a " crystalball man," Sir Dan said that he visualised growing opportunity along the edge of ownaccount .activities for contract hire, truck rental, distribution service companies, consul fancies, consortia of small hauliers and joint venture companies.
And he also foresaw the end of nondescript general haulage and indeed of systems claiming to give a general service with national coverage which spread resources indiscriminately.
"The opportunities are there, but we are not the only contestants and the enemy; own-account, is at the gate.
"The RHA must accept that its own function and purpose is in the melting pot. Unless we continue to show vigilance and to respond by reinforcing our professionalism we shall begin to look like the Loyal Company of Archers
facing up to the modern technologies of the Royal Mr K. Rogers (Eastern area) asked if it was not wishful thinking to say that ownaccount was being operated on a low or no return.
Marginal
Sir Dan said that it was a difficult thing to decide because the own-account always made their case on marginal things. Increasingly hauliers should say •to them• that if they packaged differently or re-scheduled they could be given a cheaper service.
Mrs D. G. Parkin (North West (East)) said that the amount of traffic being carried by own-account was of great concern and professional hauliers were being thwarted in every way.
Sir Dan said that it was the professionals who neglected the area of 'significant growth and allowed own-account to become well based. They were turning traffic into return loads and quoting half rates.
"To fight them we have to be better than the are."